Trump refuses to apologize for video with racist imagery of Obamas posted on his social media
Only a smattering of Republicans spoke out about clip in which Obamas’ faces were superimposed on bodies of apes
Donald Trump said on Friday evening, after a racist video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes had been posted to his social media account and then deleted, that he had directed aides to post the offensive video but that he hadn’t seen that portion of the clip and he refused to apologize for it.
The clip appeared during one of the 79-year-old US president’s increasingly frequent late-night posting sprees to his Truth Social account, and shows the laughing faces of the former president and first lady superimposed on the bodies of primates in a jungle setting, bobbing to the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight.
They appear briefly at the end of a minute-long video made by a third party that amplifies Trump’s persistent but false claim that he won the 2020 election, when in fact he lost to Joe Biden. The conspiracy-theory video is a repost of content stamped with the logo of the website Patriot News Outlet, a site supportive of Trump, a Republican.
Although the White House initially defended the video in a statement from the press secretary, the video was later deleted and reporters were told that it had been posted, without the president’s knowledge, by an aide.
Natalie Harp, an aide to Trump, and a former anchor for the conspiratorial One American News, reportedly has access to the president’s Truth Social account.
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