Obamas | Pakistan

US President Donald Trump refused to apologise on Friday for a video posted on his social media account depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys, though he said he condemned the post as the White House shifted the blame to staff. The video shared on Trump’s Truth Social account late on Thursday night sparked censure across the US political spectrum, with the White House initially rejecting “fake outrage” only to then blame the post on an error by a staff member. “I didn’t make a mistake,” Trump said on Air Force One late on Friday when asked if he would apologise for the post. Asked if he condemns the racist imagery in the video, Trump replied: “Of course I do.” Democrats slammed Trump as “vile” over the clip of the Obamas — the first Black president and first lady in US history while a senior Republican senator said the video was blatantly racist. Near the end of the one-minute-long video promoting conspiracies about Republican Trump’s 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, the Obamas were shown with their f...

A video shared on United States President Donald Trump’s social media account that depicted former president Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as apes was deleted on Friday, following criticism that Trump’s post evoked racist imagery long used to dehumanise people of African descent. “A White House staffer erroneously made the post,” said a White House official, who declined to be named. “It has been taken down.” The statement came hours after White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt described as “fake outrage” a wave of negative reactions to the video, including from several prominent Republican lawmakers. Late on Thursday, Trump shared a minute-long video amplifying the Republican US president’s false claims that his 2020 election defeat was the result of fraud. Spliced into the video was an apparently AI-generated clip of dancing primates superimposed with the Obamas’ heads. The post on Trump’s Truth Social network drew swift criticism from prominent political figures, including Republican Senator...