“I Won’t Apologize”: Trump Breaks Silence on Post Depicting Obamas as Apes

President Donald Trump said Friday he will not apologize for sharing a social media post that included racist imagery portraying Barack and Michelle Obama as cartoon apes, even though the post was later removed.

The roughly one-minute video primarily repeated false claims about fraud in the 2020 election. Near the end, it cut to edited images of the former president and first lady’s faces placed onto animated apes, set to the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that he only viewed the beginning of the video before it was posted.

“I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine,” he said. “I looked in the first part and it was really about voter fraud…and the machines, how crooked it is, how disgusting it is. Then I gave it to the people. Generally, they’d look at the whole thing. But I guess somebody didn’t, and they posted.”

He added that the video was removed once the imagery was noticed. “We took it down as soon as we found out about it,” Trump said.

A White House official told NBC News the post was made in error by a staff member and was removed shortly before noon Friday.

Trump said he condemns the racist content in the video but insisted he had not made a mistake. “Of course” he condemns it, he said. “No, I didn’t make a mistake.”

The post prompted criticism from lawmakers in both parties.

Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the Senate’s only Black Republican, called it “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House” and demanded its removal. Trump later said he spoke with Scott and that “Tim understood that 100%.”

Other Republicans also criticized the post. Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska wrote that “a reasonable person sees the racist context to this” and said the White House should remove it and apologize. Rep. Mike Lawler of New York called it “wrong and incredibly offensive—whether intentional or a mistake—and should be deleted immediately with an apology offered.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt initially described the video as “an internet meme depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from ‘The Lion King,’” and urged media outlets to “stop the fake outrage.”

The incident drew particular attention during Black History Month. Barack Obama became the first Black U.S. president in 2009.

Several Republican lawmakers continued to call for an apology after the video was removed. Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio said the images were “offensive, heart breaking, and unacceptable,” while Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania called the post “a grave failure of judgment” and “absolutely unacceptable.”

Sen. John Curtis of Utah criticized how long the video remained online, saying the content was “blatantly racist and inexcusable” and “should never have been posted or left published for so long.”

The episode follows other instances in which Trump has shared altered or AI-generated content targeting political opponents. It also comes as Trump has renewed public focus on claims about the 2020 election, including recent FBI activity related to voter records in Georgia.

Representatives for the Obamas did not immediately comment.