President Donald Trump declined to apologize for a video portraying former president Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, as gorillas shared on his Truth Social account Friday morning.
Before boarding Air Force One to head to Mar-A-Lago on Friday night, Trump explained that he did not watch the full video that was largely about election technology.
“No, I didn’t make a mistake,” the president said when asked if he planned to apologize after Republicans called for him to do so. “I look at thousands of things. I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine.”
In recounting the post that garnered widespread criticism, he called the clip of the Obamas “some kind of a picture that people don’t like” and said that he “wouldn’t like it either.”
He added that he “has no message” for Americans who were offended by the video because he “didn’t know about it.”
When asked if the video being shared hurts his likeness with minority voters, Trump expressed that black voters have been great to him and he has been great to them, arguing that he is the “least racist president you’ve had in a long time.”
“Nobody knew that was at the end, if they would have looked they would have seen it, and probably they would have had the sense to take it down,” Trump said.
The video sparked criticism from Republican lawmakers, including Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who called for the president to remove the post and called it “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”
Trump said that he spoke to Tim Scott about the video, including that he had not watched all the way through, and said Scott “understood that 100%.”
TRUMP TAKES DOWN VIDEO DEPICTING OBAMAS AS MONKEYS AFTER SWIFT BIPARTISAN CRITICISM
The White House said Friday that a staffer “erroneously” posted the video overnight. It was up for about 12 hours before being deleted. A source close to the president told the Washington Examiner that the president “had not seen that video before it was posted.”
The clip of the Obamas was from a video created with artificial intelligence that overlaid politicians’ faces over jungle and safari animals. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt at first defended the post, saying the video was a clip from a meme of The Lion King. However, the Disney movie does not feature gorillas.
