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Donald Trump on Friday removed a social media post that included a racist meme depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes following fierce backlash, including from within the Republican Party.
The US president had posted a video on his Truth Social account hours earlier that sought to cast doubt on the validity of his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden, ending with the imagery of the Obamas as primates and music from the film The Lion King.
The Obamas’ office did not reply immediately to a request for comment.
The clip was rapidly condemned as deeply offensive across the political spectrum, piling pressure on Trump to retract it and putting the White House on the defensive.
“Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The president should remove it,” Tim Scott, the Republican senator from South Carolina and longest serving Black member of the upper chamber of Congress, wrote on X.
Pete Ricketts, a Republican senator from Nebraska, also wrote on X: “Even if this was a Lion King meme, a reasonable person sees the racist context to this. The White House should do what anyone does when they make a mistake: remove this and apologise.”
The White House’s initial reaction to the widespread outrage about the meme was to dismiss it, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling reporters to “stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public”.
But by late morning, the White House said the post had been removed. “A White House staffer erroneously made the post,” an official said.
While the administration sought to limit the fallout from the meme, there may be lasting damage to Trump at a time when he is suffering from languishing poll numbers nine months ahead of the midterm elections.
When he won his second term in 2024 against Kamala Harris, Trump made some crucial gains in support from Black and Hispanic voters, but some polls have shown he has since lost ground with those groups.
The NAACP, the prominent civil rights organisation, wrote on X: “Trump posting this video . . . is a stark reminder of how Trump and his followers truly view people. And we’ll remember that in November.”
Raphael Warnock, the Democratic senator from Georgia, said: “Our nation’s spiritual rot is coming from the White House.”
“I’m calling on all decent and honourable people to condemn this unabashed racism,” said Warnock, who is also a senior pastor at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr once preached.
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