A White House official on Friday insisted a racist Truth Social post from President Donald Trump was "erroneously made" by a White House official, CNN reports.
The post went up at 11:44 p.m. EST, along with a slew of other posts on Trump's account. One of the re-posted videos described Trump as the "King of the Jungle" while depicting former President Barack Obama and his wife as apes, a frequently used racist trope.
Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) all spoke publicly against Trump's post.
Scott hoped it wasn't real and called it racist.
"This is totally unacceptable. The president should take it down and apologize," said Wicker.
Rickets posted on X, "Even if this was a Lion King meme, a reasonable person sees the racist context to this. The White House should do what anyone does when they make a mistake: remove this and apologize."
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) similarly came out against the post.
"The President’s post is wrong and incredibly offensive — whether intentional or a mistake — and should be deleted immediately with an apology offered," he wrote.
During a CNN discussion about the matter, host Dana Bash and panelists noted that the White House came out Friday morning to defend the meme, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling people the post was about the "Lion King." There are no ape characters in the "Lion King."
"Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public," Leavitt said Friday morning.
In less than four hours, the White House deleted the meme and blamed a staffer for the incident.
The meme recalled some of Trump's most racist comments about Obama not being a legitimate America and, as such, not a legitimate president. What became known as his so-called "birther campaign" spread the conspiracy theory that Obama had a fake birth certificate from Hawaii when he was actually born in Kenya.
