USA Trump on racist post: Didn't make a mistake
US President Donald Trump will not apologize for the post on his social media account that contained a racist depiction of former President Barack Obama and his wife as monkeys.
07.02.2026, 05:24
SDA
When asked about this, he told journalists: "No, I didn't make a mistake."
He had only watched the beginning of the video, Trump said. He assumed that there was something at the end that people didn't like - he didn't like it either, but he hadn't seen it, he said. Trump's statements on this could not be independently verified.
When asked whether he condemned the racist content of the video, Trump said: "Of course I do." The White House had initially tried to justify the post with the racist portrayal, but the post was later deleted from Trump's account on his online platform Truth Social after massive criticism. The blame was placed on an employee.
"A White House staffer published the post in error," a senior US official said.
White House: feigned outrage should stop
Initially, however, the White House tried to defend the article. Government spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt wrote in a statement, which was distributed by the TV channel CNN, for example, that the feigned outrage should stop. It was an excerpt from an internet meme video in which Trump was depicted as the king of the jungle and the Democrats as characters from the classic film "The Lion King".
The depiction of Obama was part of a post on Trump's account about alleged manipulation in the 2020 election, which Trump lost. After about a minute, the faces of Barack and Michelle Obama with monkey bodies appeared in a short insert to the tune of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". The clip with the Obamas probably comes from an AI-generated video that was created by another account and circulated last fall, according to an investigation by Deutsche Presse-Agentur's fact-checking team.
Obama, a Democrat, is the first black man to be elected President of the United States. He was in office from 2009 to 2017.
Outrage over racism - Trump praises himself
The post was even criticized by Republicans. Black Republican Senator Tim Scott, for example, wrote on the X platform that it was the most racist thing he had ever seen from the White House. "The president should remove it". Trump now said that he had spoken to Scott and that he was "great".
The US President has often spread racist statements and images. However, he himself said on Friday (local time) to journalists on the government plane Air Force One: "I'm the least racist president you've had in a long time, by the way".
Black people are repeatedly subjected to racism in which comparisons to apes are used as a means of insulting and belittling them. In Germany, for example, repeated incidents in football stadiums have also made the headlines.
