‘On Brand’: Trump Called Out For Blaming Racist Obama Post on Staffer

(AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

It seems that few people on X believe the White House’s claim that an unnamed staffer has access to President Donald Trump’s social media accounts and is the real culprit behind a racist video he shared Thursday night.

The video about rigged elections included a clip showing former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama‘s faces superimposed onto the bodies of apes.

Outrage ensued over the blatant racism portrayed in the post, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle called for Trump to take down the video and apologize.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt brushed off the controversy as “fake outrage” before finally deleting the post some 12 hours after it appeared on Trump’s feed.

The official White House excuse was that a “staffer erroneously made the post,” according to CNN’s Alayna Treene. Another reporter, Sophia Cai with Politico, added that an administration official told her, “President Trump didn’t see the video (legitimately didn’t), a staffer posted it.”

The Hill’s Julia Manchester reported that a senior Trump official said, “the staffer who did post the video ‘really let the president down.'”

Film producer and the Black List founder Franklin Leonard pointed out that Trump has been “using this excuse for more than ten years and y’all are still falling for it.” Leonard included a Trump tweet from 2015 when he was running for president, in which he wrote, “The young intern who accidentally did a Retweet apologizes” for apparently offending Iowans.

Journalist Michael Balter added, “I suppose it’s the same young intern this time, although it’s getting old.”

Strangely, former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz (R) retweeted Trump’s 2015 excuse, writing, “Still a banger.”

Political strategist Mike Nellis wrote, “Absolutely lazy for the White House to blame a random staffer for the racist AI post. Trump posted it himself in the middle of the night, as he has many, many times. Plus, they’ve posted plenty of other offensive shit—remember when he used AI to show himself napalming Chicago?”

Below are some additional reactions:

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