The President of the United States (USA), Donald Trump, stated that he did not see the racist part of the video he published on his own profile on a social network in which he portrayed the Obama couple as monkeys. Despite condemning the racist passage, Trump said he will not apologize.
“I didn’t make any mistakes. I mean, I analyze thousands of things. And I saw the beginning [do vídeo]. Everything was fine,” Trump said after being questioned by journalists while boarding the presidential plane.
The video had wide repercussion and led even Republican leaders from Trump’s party to ask the president to apologize for the post. After criticism, the post was deleted by the agent.
The racist video shows former US president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama in monkey bodies. Obama was the first black president in US history.
The 2-second image was included at the end of a video lasting about 1 minute with conspiracy theories that reflect already debunked allegations of fraud in the 2020 elections, when Trump lost to Democratic President Joe Biden and did not recognize the results.
Pressed by journalists, Trump added that “probably” no one on his team saw the end of the video.
“Someone missed a very small detail. In fact, I repeat, I didn’t do it, it was someone else. It was a republication, we didn’t do it [o vídeo]”, added the American president.
Republicans criticize
The post was criticized not only by the Republican’s opponents, but by party supporters, who condemned the video as blatantly racist.
Senator Tim Scott, the only black Republican serving in the US Congress, said he prayed the video was fake “because it is the most racist thing I have ever seen coming from this White House.”
Also Republican Representative Mike Lawler said that the publication is “extremely offensive – whether intentional or a mistake”, adding that President Trump, in addition to deleting the video, should make an apology.
False fraud reports
The racist video was published amid dozens of posts by President Trump with false accusations of fraud in the 2020 election. In the video in which Obama appears as a monkey are already debunked accusations that the vote counting company Dominion Voting Systems helped to rig the election.
For having broadcast this false accusation, the Trumpist broadcaster Fox News made an out-of-court settlement of US$787 million with Dominion to suspend a defamation lawsuit filed by the aforementioned technology company.
Trump’s electoral risk
The reinforcement of the thesis of electoral fraud in 2020 by the US president comes amid assessments that Trump could lose the small majority he maintains in the US House and Senate in the November elections this year.
Last Saturday, Democrat Taylor Rehmet won a Texas state Senate seat that had been held by a Republican since the 1990s, reported historian Heather Cox Richardson of Boston University.
“[O democrata] won by a margin of 14.4 percentage points in a district that Trump won in 2024 by 17 points. The 32 percentage point swing left Republicans ‘in total panic,'” said the expert.
