Trump deletes racist clip of Obamas as monkeys

President Donald Trump shared a post with a racist video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys, sparking outrage across the US political spectrum Friday, before deleting it in a rare backtrack and denying he had seen the relevant clip.

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The White House initially rejected "fake outrage" over the video shared on Trump's Truth Social account late Thursday night, only to then blame the post on an error by a staff member.

Democrats slammed Trump as "vile" over the post about 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 faces on the bodies of monkeys for about one second.

The video, uploaded late Thursday amid a flurry of other posts, repeated false allegations that ballot-counting company Dominion Voting Systems helped steal the election from Trump.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt initially played down the row, saying the images were "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," Leavitt said in a statement to AFP.

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