President Donald Trump refused to apologize Friday after posting and then deleting a racist video depicting former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes in a jungle, insisting he hadn’t seen the final frames containing the offensive content and blaming a staffer for the mistake.

The explanation, offered to reporters on Air Force One, was the first acknowledgement that Trump himself had screened at least part of the video that had thrown the White House into damage control mode for most of the day. The White House said earlier, after the video was removed, that a staffer had posted it in error.

The video was posted late Thursday night — and remained online for nearly 12 hours — before the White House took it down amid bipartisan outrage, including from close Trump allies. The president, however, insisted Friday evening the video was taken down “as soon as we found out about it.”

“I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine,” he said, referring to the first part of the video that contained debunked claims about fraud in voting machines.

“It was a very strong post in terms of voter fraud,” he went on. “Nobody knew that that was in the end. If they would have looked, they would have seen it, and probably they would have had the sense to take it down.”

Trump said after he watched the first section of the video, he passed it on to a staffer, who he said should have watched it to the end.

“Somebody slipped and missed a very small part,” he said.

But when asked directly whether he would apologize amid GOP calls to do so, he declined.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t make a mistake.”

When pressed, Trump said he condemned the racist portion of the clip. “Of course I do,” he said.

And asked later whether the video could hurt Republicans’ standing with Black voters, the president said no and defended his achievements.

“I am, by the way, the least racist president you’ve had in a long time,” he said.

GOP backlash

The White House’s statement blaming a staffer came after serious backlash, including from GOP Sen. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, who called the post racist and said Trump should remove it.

“Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it,” the South Carolina Republican, who’s also the chair of the Senate GOP campaign committee, wrote on X.

Trump and Scott spoke about the video on Friday morning before it was deleted from the president’s feed, Trump told reporters.

The White House had earlier defended the post and downplayed the response to the video, calling it “fake outrage.” But just before noon, an official told CNN, “A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down.” A GOP Senate official said Republican lawmakers had called Trump to discuss the post with him.

The controversy sent the White House into a defensive crouch, sources said, with officials, advisers and allies reaching out to lawmakers and the media to try to dispute that Trump himself played any role. One White House adviser asserted that, “The president was not aware of that video, and was very let down by the staffer who put it out.” Another ally sought to place blame on a specific aide.

Sources familiar with Trump’s social media use said the president often posts personally on Truth Social – particularly late at night and early in the morning – and he often personally re-posts others’ posts. During the day, the sources said, he often signs a post with the initials “DJT” to indicate he made it personally. But the sources said a few close aides – including Natalie Harp, who will sometimes type out posts that are dictated to her, and Dan Scavino, a deputy chief of staff who ran Trump’s social media accounts during his first term, also have access.

South Carolina preacher Mark Burns, a longtime Trump ally who has served as an informal spiritual adviser, said he’d spoken to the president on Friday about the video and urged him to fire whomever posted it.

“The President made it clear to me that this post was made by a staffer and not by him,” Burns wrote on X. “My recommendation to the President was direct and firm. That staffer should be fired immediately, and the President should publicly condemn this action.”

The Obamas briefly and suddenly appear near the end of the short video, which promotes false claims that voting machines helped steal the 2020 election, with their faces superimposed onto the bodies of apes. As the images appear, for about one second, the start of the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” plays in the background.

CNN has reached out to the Obamas for comment.

The post, which recalls the racist trope of comparing Black people with monkeys, prompted swift backlash, including from several Republican lawmakers who have had close relationships with the White House.

Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, who is considered one of the most vulnerable Republicans in Congress, condemned the Truth Social post and called on Trump to apologize.

“The President’s post is wrong and incredibly offensive — whether intentional or a mistake — and should be deleted immediately with an apology offered,” Lawler wrote on X.

Another blue state Republican who could face a competitive reelection, Rep. Nick LaLota of New York, also urged Trump to delete the post.

And in the minutes before its removal, two close White House allies in the Senate — Pete Ricketts of Nebraska and Roger Wicker of Mississippi — went public with their own calls for Trump to apologize, in a sign that criticism within the party was beginning to snowball.

“This is totally unacceptable,” Wicker, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote on X. “The president should take it down and apologize.”

Despite outrage from some GOP lawmakers, the top two Senate Republican leaders, John Thune and John Barrasso, are not commenting on the controversy. Aides to the senators said they would notify CNN if they decide to respond.

White House changes its tune

But the post’s deletion marked an abrupt shift from just hours earlier, when White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had dismissed the initial outcry.

“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” Leavitt said in a statement. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

The clip of the Obamas, which was spliced into the end of a longer video promoting unfounded election conspiracies, appeared to come from a video shared last October by an X user and captioned “President Trump: King of the Jungle.”

That original video depicted several prominent Democrats as various animals, as well as showing the Obamas as apes.

The X user who posted that video appeared to be the same one who first posted a video that Trump had shared in October showing the president wearing a crown and flying a fighter jet dumping what appears to be waste on protesters at a “No Kings” rally.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, the only Black party leader in Congress, blasted Trump in an Instagram video. “F**k Donald Trump and his vile, racist, and malignant behavior. This guy is an unhinged bottom feeder,” the New York Democrat said.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris criticized the White House’s explanation, writing on X: “No one believes this cover up from the White House, especially since they originally defended the post. We are all clear-eyed about who Donald Trump is and what he believes.”

The office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom condemned the video in a post on X, writing: “Disgusting behavior by the President. Every single Republican must denounce this. Now.”

The racist clip was one of a slew of posts shared by Trump’s account late Thursday night into the early hours of Friday, many of which amplified videos or posts made by others that praised Trump and his agenda and attacked Democrats.

In the minutes before sharing the video containing the Obamas, Trump also twice shared an eight-minute video that claimed the Republican Party was originally founded “for one primary, but moral reason, and that reason was to stop the expansion of slavery.”

Another post around that time contained a clip of a TikTok video that featured a man accusing Democrats of being “anti-Black folk.”

Several other posts that Trump shared on Thursday night promoted false claims of interference in the 2020 elections, including one that appeared to accuse Michigan’s secretary of state of stuffing the ballot box.

Latest example of Trump’s controversial social media

The incident is the latest example of Trump drawing criticism for sharing racist content on his social media platform.

Last year, the president posted an apparent AI video depicting Barack Obama being arrested in the Oval Office. Later last year, Trump and members of his administration also shared digitally altered images and videos of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a fake mustache and a sombrero, imagery Jeffries publicly described as racist.

Trump also has a long history of posting and reposting conspiracy theories and other false claims. But it is very unusual for the president to take down a social media post — and even more rare to issue an apology or take responsibility for posts insulting large swaths of people.

As he was campaigning for president in October 2015, Trump re-tweeted a post questioning the mental fitness of Iowans.

That post was removed a few hours later, and Trump pinned blame on a “young intern” in a statement: “The young intern who accidentally did a Retweet apologizes.” He went on to lose the Iowa caucuses.

But Trump has also offered some insight into his social media philosophy, telling CNN in August of that year, “You know, I retweet – I retweet for a reason.” (CNN)

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