When asked if he would apologize for an overtly racist video clip of the Obamas posted on President Trump's Truth Social, the president said Friday, "No, I didn't make a mistake."
Why it matters: The clip, which portrayed former President Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes and was taken down on Friday, used a centuries-old trope against the first Black president and first lady in U.S. history during the first week of Black History Month.
Zoom in: Trump said he looks at "thousands of things" when he spoke to reporters on Air Force One en route to Palm Beach.
- "I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine."
- "Nobody knew that that was at the end," Trump later added. "If they would have looked, they would have seen it, and probably they would have had the sense to take it down."
- He also said he spoke to Sen. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate. "Tim is a great guy," Trump said. "He understood that 100%."
- Scott earlier called the posting "the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House."
A White House official blamed a staffer for erroneously posting the video.
- Trump's post roiled the White House as staffers reflexively defended the president's post — even as they were besieged with calls from fellow Republicans begging the president to take it down, according to a source familiar with the discussions.
- While the White House went on the record earlier Friday to defend the post, the administration wouldn't do so to explain why the video was removed from Trump's account, despite a four-hour gap between the statement and the post's deletion.
Driving the news: The two-second snippet appeared at the end of a screen-recorded election conspiracy video that abruptly cuts to the clip and then cuts back. Trump's account posted it at 11:44pm ET on Thursday, and it stayed up for about 12 hours.
- The clip, a parody of "The Lion King," is an AI-generated video created by a MAGA meme account.
- The full video includes other Democratic lawmakers as well, including former President Biden, former Vice President Harris, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
- The Obama Foundation did not immediately respond to Axios' request for comment on Friday morning. The Obamas had not addressed Trump's post on their respective social media accounts, either.
Trump's post drew condemnation from Democrats on social media and some organizations.
- "Donald Trump's video is blatantly racist, disgusting, and utterly despicable," NAACP national president Derrick Johnson said in a statement.
Catch up quick: Hours before it was taken down, the White House dismissed criticism of the video as "fake outrage."
- "This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from [T]he Lion King," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
- Leavitt had previously declined to say whether Trump would remove the video clip or apologize.
Context: Depictions and caricatures of Black people as monkeys or apes were used to justify slavery, lynching, and the creation of Jim Crow laws.
The big picture: Trump has long peddled conspiracy theories about former President Obama.
- Trump was a driving force of the "birther" movement against Obama, which falsely claimed that the former president was born in Kenya and had a forged birth certificate, which therefore disqualified him from serving as president.
Before Trump joined the political scene in 2015, it was common in modern American politics for elected or appointed officials to face consequences for making racist or bigoted comments, Axios' Zachary Basu and Russell Contreras previously reported.
- Trump has previously been criticized for racist comments, including saying immigrants were "poisoning the blood" of the U.S. — echoing white supremacist rhetoric; saying former Vice President Harris "became" Black, and describing Somali immigrants as "garbage."
Axios' Marc Caputo and Lauren Floyd contributed to this report.
Go deeper: How Trump flipped America's race conversation
Editor's note: This story has been updated with the president's remarks and additional details throughout.
