Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham sharply questioned the White House on Friday for their wavering explanation and slow handling of President Donald Trump’s racist social media post targeting the Obamas.
Trump posted the racist video to his Truth Social overnight on Friday, which at the end depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, a racist trope.
The post was met with swift criticism from both Democrats and Republicans, notably from Sen. Tim Scott, a staunch Trump ally and the only Black Republican in the Senate.
“Karoline, I know the president did remove it, he deleted it, but it was up for, I think 12 hours or something like that. How did this happen? And can you really throw a staffer under the bus for this?” Ingraham asked White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt on The Ingraham Angle.
“Well look Laura, it was a meme that was posted by a staffer on the president’s Truth Social account,” Leavitt responded.
“It was from a Lion King video depicting, as you pointed out, different Democrats as different animals. I think Kamala Harris was depicted as a turtle in this video meme,” Leavitt laughed.
Leavitt continued that Trump had spoken with lawmakers that day “out of respect for them” and removed the post.
“But leave it to the leftist media, of course, to talk about this all day, rather than talk about the fact that the DOW has broken over 50,000 points for the first time,” Leavitt complained.
The president posted the video with the racist clip in a longer video pushing an unfounded conspiracy about voting machines in the 2020 election. The post remained on Trump’s social media account for 12 hours before it was taken down.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt originally defended the president for his racist post.
“This is 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,” she said in a statement to several news outlets.
The White House later deleted the post, claiming instead a staffer had “erroneously made the post.”
Trump’s own explanation does not align with the official White House’s explanation that a staffer made the post. The president confirmed that he watched the video and posted it.
“I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine,” Trump said Friday evening.
When asked by reporters if he would apologize amid calls from his own party to do so, he declined.
“No,” Trump said. “I didn’t make a mistake.”
The post Fox News Host Corners Leavitt on Trump’s Vile Post appeared first on The Daily Beast.
