CNN’s Jake Tapper Mercilessly Mocks Trump’s ‘Staffer’ Excuse For Racist Obama Apes Video

CNN anchor Jake Tapper mercilessly mocked the “staffer” excuse given for President Donald Trump’s racist Truth Social post with the clear suggestion that the “staffer” does not exist.

Trump posted a video to his Truth Social account at 11:44 PM on Thursday night that contains an image depicting President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes:

The post drew widespread outrage including from Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who called it “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”

Trump White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the post in a statement:

“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King. Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

But after 12 hours or so, the post was deleted, with an unnamed White House official claiming “A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down.”

On Friday’s edition of CNN’s The Lead, Tapper began his show with a blistering rundown of the incident that included the derisive question “Is the staffer in the room with you right now?”:

JAKE TAPPER: President Trump facing bipartisan outrage over racist imagery he posted of the Obamas as apes. A video one might normally hope is confined to just the accounts of trolls in the darkest corners of the Internet.

Yet it was shared on Truth Social by the president of these United States to his millions of followers. We don’t want to dignify the racist meme itself by giving the video more time than it deserves. We’re only going to show it so you can see for yourself.

It’s a still image from the video depicting former President Barack Obama and former first Lady Michelle Obama as apes, an age old, blatantly racist trope. The song that plays in the background is “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

The post has now been deleted after remaining online for roughly 12 hours. Neither the president nor the White House has apologized for its posting. Initially, the White House not only downplayed it, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt in a statement seemed outraged that people were even asking about it.

She said, quote, “This is from an Internet meme video depicting President Trump as the king of the jungle and Democrats as characters from “The Lion King.” Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public,” unquote.

Translation, I guess, hakuna matata, no worries? But first of all, reposting a racist meme is not an excuse for posting something racist. The fact that it was a meme.

Second, he only posted the part of that meme video that featured the Obamas, not any other part of it. Third, one does have to wonder about the worldview of the meme maker given that there are no apes in “The Lion King.” For those wondering Rafiki is a mandrill.

The White House found out pretty quickly that the so called accusation that all of those voicing legitimate outrage were actually sharing fake outrage was actually very real.

Beyond an outcry from Democrats and Independents, there were Republicans such as Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only black Republican senator and a staunch Trump ally who tweeted, “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it,” unquote.

His prayers were not answered because it was not fake. And Republican Congressman Mike Lawler of New York also condemned the post, called on Trump to apologize. More Republican senators followed.

And given how often Congressional Republicans claim to have not seen an offensive tweet or they try to change the subject or they pretend to be on their phones, all of that blowback suggested that the initial White House excuse was just not cutting it.

So lo and behold, the White House response changed, as it often does. Just before noon, the White House released a new statement saying, quote, “A White House staffer erroneously made the post it has been taken down,” unquote.

The White House did not answer my question as to which staffer it was. Is the staffer in the room with you right now?

So the president, who takes pride in his late night Truth Social posting and reposting sprees, just happened to have a staffer pinching — pinch hitting for him last night in that posting spree and it just happened to contain a racist video. Now some of us are old enough to remember when President Trump took ownership for his late night posts on Truth Social or Truths to the point that he was distinguishing between what he truthed and what he retruthed. When I say some of us are old enough to remember that it was two days ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TOM LLAMAS, NBC BEWS ANCHOR: But you tweeted out some theories about Italians and satellites. I mean, do you believe that stuff?

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, no, no. No. I — no, I didn’t — I sometimes will retruth.

LLAMAS: Yes.

TRUMP: I’ll retruth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: So the White House, after they initially defended the post and said the outrage was fake, is now blaming some nameless, faceless staffer. If this person exists, who was supposedly truthing on the president’s account just before midnight last night. They continue the same approach on another front.

Watch above via CNN’s The Lead.

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