Karoline Leavitt Asked If White House Has a ‘Social Media Problem’ After Deleted Ape and Genocide Posts

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked Tuesday if the administration had a “social media problem” in the aftermath of two deleted posts, one on Vice President JD Vance’s X account and one on President Donald Trump’s Truth Social account.

Last Thursday evening, Trump posted a video with baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election that included a short clip at the end with former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama, showing their faces superimposed on apes’ bodies. The video was furiously criticized by members of Congress on both sides of the aisle, members of the media, and other political commentators as racist.

Leavitt initially defended the post as simply sharing an “Internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle” and dismissed critics as voicing “fake outrage.” But shortly before noon ET Friday, the post was deleted, and a still-unnamed White House staffer was blamed for making an “erroneous” post.

Tuesday, Vance’s account posted, then deleted, a tweet that included a photo of him with Second Lady Usha Vance at “a wreath laying ceremony at the Armenian Genocide memorial to honor the victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide.”

An official with Vance’s office said that the tweet was “posted in error” by a staffer who was not traveling with the delegation.

The tweet “broke from Trump administration policy, which does not use the word ‘genocide’ to refer to the systematic killing and deportation of Armenians in what is now Turkey,” reported CNN. President Joe Biden was a noteworthy exception to a long-running avoidance by American authorities to avoid using the term “genocide” in an effort to not damage the relationship with Turkey.

CNN’s report included additional details about the estimated death toll:

The number of Armenians killed has been a major point of contention. Estimates range from 300,000 to 2 million deaths between 1914 and 1923, with not all of the victims in the Ottoman Empire. But most estimates — including one of 800,000 between 1915 and 1918, made by Ottoman authorities themselves — fall between 600,000 and 1.5 million.

Whether due to killings or forced deportation, the number of Armenians living in Turkey fell from 2 million in 1914 to under 400,000 by 1922.

The Armenian National Committee of America excoriated the deletion as “disgraceful” and “a denialist action consistent with President Trump’s shameful retreat from honest American remembrance of a crime recognized by all 50 states, the US Congress, the White House, and more than a dozen of our NATO allies.”

Tuesday afternoon, during a briefing at the White House, Leavitt was asked about these deleted posts.

“Today, the Vice President’s account posted and then deleted a tweet about the Armenian genocide, and then last week, President Trump’s Truth Social account posted and then deleted a racist video about the Obamas,” said Danny Kemp, the White House correspondent for Agence France-Presse. “And the White House, again, blamed that on a staffer. I wanted to ask you, does the White House have a social media problem at the moment? Do you have an auto-posting problem that’s leading to these mistakes?”

“No,” replied Leavitt. “As for the Armenian tweet that you’re referring to, I would just refer you back to the White House’s message that was issued on Armenian Remembrance Day, and there’s been no change of policy at this time.”

Leavitt then moved on to the next reporter’s question without mentioning the Obama video clip or otherwise commenting on the deleted posts.

Watch the video above via The White House on YouTube.

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