Obamas (AP file photo)
White House said on Friday that a racist video shared from US president Donald Trump’s social media account was posted by mistake by a staff member and has now been removed.“A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down,” a White House official told AFP.
The video had been posted on Thursday (local time) on Trump’s Truth Social platform. It repeated claims that Dominion Voting Systems helped steal the 2020 presidential election and briefly showed former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama with their faces edited onto monkeys.The post drew immediate backlash from Democratic leaders and former officials, who called the imagery offensive. The office of California governor Gavin Newsom slammed the post, saying, “Disgusting behavior by the president. Every single Republican must denounce this. Now.” Ben Rhodes, a former national security adviser and close aide to Barack Obama, also condemned the video. “Let it haunt Trump and his racist followers that future Americans will embrace the Obamas as beloved figures while studying him as a stain on our history,” Rhodes wrote on X.By early Friday morning, the video had received more than 1,000 likes on Truth Social. Trump’s spokeswoman dismissed criticism of the post and called it “fake outrage”.Since starting his second term, Trump has frequently shared digitally created images and videos on social media. Last year, he shared an AI-generated video showing Barack Obama being arrested in the Oval Office and later shown behind bars in an orange jumpsuit.
