President Donald Trump has said that he is the “least racist president” after posting a racist video depicting former President Barack Obama as a monkey.
On board Air Force One on Friday evening, Trump, 79, touted his criminal justice reforms in a rambling answer to a question about the impact of his post on Republican voting intentions at the upcoming midterm elections.
“I am, by the way, the least racist president you’ve had in a long time, as far as I’m concerned,” Trump said.
“I got the highest vote with male Black voters that they’ve seen in many, many decades,” he continued. “Black voters have been great to me, I’ve been great to them.”
Trump’s claims to have the highest vote among Black voters are true, but only by Republican standards. From 2016 to 2024, his vote share with Black voters climbed from 8 to 15 percent. In the 2024 election, Kamala Harris won 83 percent of the Black vote.
Trump also contradicted previous White House claims that the video in question was posted by a “staffer” to his Truth Social account. He gave a rambling answer when questioned whether or not that “staffer” would be fired.
“No. I looked at it, I saw it, and I just looked at the first part… I didn’t see the whole thing. I guess, during the end of it, there was some kind of a thing that people don’t like. I wouldn’t like it either, but I didn’t see it,” Trump said.
“I gave it to the people who, generally they look at the whole thing, but I guess somebody didn’t, and they posted, and we took it down,” he continued.
The 62-second video Trump posted was mainly on voter fraud conspiracies about the 2020 election, as Trump noted, but included a two-second clip of the racist depiction at the end.
That clip comes from a longer AI creation made by the same troll who created the infamous video of Trump wearing a crown and dropping feces on protesters. It depicts his political rivals as animals dancing to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” bowing down to Trump as a lion.
Asked whether he would apologize for posting the video, which was live for roughly 12 hours before being removed from his account, Trump said he had no reason to.
“No. I didn’t make a mistake. I look at a lot of—thousands of things. I looked at the beginning of it, it was fine,” Trump said.
“Certainly, it was a very strong post in terms of voter fraud, nobody knew that that was at the end. If they would have looked, they would have seen it, and probably they would have had the sense to take it down.”
While Trump’s online behavior frequently draws criticism from his detractors, this is a rare instance in which those who have nailed their colors to the MAGA mast are breaking ranks to call him out.
MAGA Republican Tim Scott, who was shortlisted as a potential VP for Trump in 2024, said that the video is “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”
Sen. Susan Collins agreed, writing, “Tim is right. This was appalling.” She joined Sen. Roger Wicker, who described it as “totally unacceptable.”
However, Trump said during the press gathering on his way to Florida that he has since spoken with Republicans who have called for him to apologize and that they “understood” his story.
“I spoke to Tim Scott, he was great. Tim is a great guy, he understood that 100 percent,” Trump said.
The portrayal of Black people as monkeys or apes is a deeply racist trope that has its origins in colonial propaganda used to justify the transatlantic slave trade.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has denied that the video is racist.
“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public,” she said in a statement.
