Trump says he will not apologize for posting racist video of Obamas: ‘I didn’t make a mistake’

By noon, the post had been taken down, with responsibility placed on a Trump subordinate.

The White House explanation raises questions about control of Trump’s social media account, which he’s used to levy import taxes, threaten military action, make other announcements and intimidate political rivals. The president often signs his name or initials after policy posts.

The White House did not immediately respond to an inquiry about how posts are vetted and when the public can know when Trump himself is posting.

Mark Burns, a pastor and a prominent Trump supporter who is Black, said Friday on X that he’d spoken “directly” with Trump and that he recommended to the president that he fire the staffer who posted the video and publicly condemn what happened.

“He knows this is wrong, offensive, and unacceptable,” Burns posted.

Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., told The Associated Press she does “not buy the White House’s commentary.”

“If there wasn’t a climate, a toxic and racist climate within the White House, we wouldn’t see this type of behavior regardless of who it’s coming from,” Clarke said, adding that Trump “is a racist, he’s a bigot, and he will continue to do things in his presidency to make that known.”

Condemnation across the political spectrum

Trump and White House social media accounts frequently repost memes and artificial intelligence-generated videos. As Leavitt did Friday, Trump allies typically cast them as humorous.

This time, condemnations flowed from across the spectrum — along with demands for an apology that had not come by late afternoon.

At a Black History Month market in Harlem, the historically Black neighborhood in New York City, vendor Jacklyn Monk said Trump’s post was embarrassing, even if it was eventually deleted. “The guy needs help. I’m sorry he’s representing our country. … It’s horrible that it was this month, but it would be horrible if it were in March also.”

In Atlanta, Rev. Bernice King, daughter of the assassinated civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., resurfaced her father’s words: “Yes. I’m Black. I’m proud of it. I’m Black and beautiful.” Black Americans, she said, “are beloved of God as postal workers and professors, as a former first lady and president. We are not apes.”

The U.S. Senate’s lone Black Republican, Tim Scott of South Carolina, called on Trump to take down the post. “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” said Scott, who chairs Senate Republicans’ midterm campaign arm.

Another Republican, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, is white but represents the state with the largest percentage of Black residents. Wicker called the post “totally unacceptable” and said the president should apologize.

Some Republicans who face tough reelections this November voiced concerns, as well. The result was an unusual cascade of intraparty criticism for a president who has enjoyed a stranglehold over fellow Republicans who stayed silent during previous Trump controversies for fear of a public spat with the president or losing his endorsement in a future campaign.

NAACP President Derrick Johnson called the video “utterly despicable” and pointed to Trump’s wider political concerns that could help explain Republicans’ willingness to speak out. Johnson asserted that Trump is trying to distract from economic conditions and attention on the Jeffrey Epstein case files.

“You know who isn’t in the Epstein files? Barack Obama,” he said. “You know who actually improved the economy as president? Barack Obama.”

A long history of racism

There is a long history in the U.S. of powerful white figures associating Black people with animals, including apes, in demonstrably false, racist ways. The practice dates to the 18th-century cultural racism and pseudo-scientific theories used to justify the enslavement of Black people, and later to dehumanize freed Black people as uncivilized threats to white people.

Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote in his famous text “Notes on the State of Virginia” that Black women were the preferred sexual partners of orangutans. President Dwight Eisenhower, discussing school desegregation in the 1950s, suggested white parents were rightfully concerned about their daughters being in classrooms with “big Black bucks.” Obama, as a candidate and president, was featured as a monkey or other primates on T-shirts and other merchandise.

In his 2024 campaign, Trump said immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” language similar to what Adolf Hitler used to dehumanize Jews in Nazi Germany.

During his first White House term, Trump called a swath of majority-Black, developing nations “shithole countries.” He initially denied saying it but admitted in December 2025 that he did.

When Obama was in the White House, Trump pushed false claims that the 44th president, who was born in Hawaii, was born in Kenya and was constitutionally ineligible to serve. Trump, in interviews that helped endear him to conservatives, demanded that Obama prove he was a “natural-born citizen” as required to become president.

Obama eventually released birth records, and Trump finally acknowledged during his 2016 campaign, after having won the Republican nomination, that Obama was born in Hawaii. But immediately after, he said, falsely, that his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, started the birtherism attacks.

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

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