White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has been called out for contradictory comments surrounding Trump’s use of Truth Social and his post relating the Obamas to apes.
Democrats, including California Governor Gavin Newsom and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, were among the Trump critics highlighting a press briefing on Wednesday where Leavitt, 28, claimed everything that the president posts on Truth Social is “straight from the horse’s mouth.”
The comments come only weeks after the White House claimed a staffer posted a racist Obama video on his personal account.
Leavitt made the comments after she was asked Wednesday about President Trump’s Truth Social post labeling the U.K.’s hold control over the Diego Garcia island a “big mistake.” The post appeared to directly contradict an earlier post in which he credited British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer with striking “the best” deal he could to secure a 99-year lease.
When asked about the about-face, Leavitt insisted the latest presidential post “should be taken as the policy of the Trump administration. When you see it on Truth Social, you know it’s directly from President Trump. That’s the beauty of this president and his transparency.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer posted bluntly afterwards: “And now @PressSec confirms: Donald Trump posted the racist video of the Obamas.”
California Governor Gavin Newsom’s Press Office X account, meanwhile, added that Trump is responsible for his posts, “unless it’s racist. Then suddenly a staffer grabbed his phone.”
Journalist Mehdi Hasan posted, “So the Obamas as apes? Directly from President Trump. She said it.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
The Obama video was posted as part of a late-night spree on Trump’s Truth Social account on Feb. 6, where 66 posts were made in a two-hour window.
When asked the following day, Trump admitted he had personally approved the AI-generated video, which begins by discussing voter fraud before ending with the Obamas depicted as apes. He claimed, however, that he did not post it.
“I looked at it, I saw it, I just looked at the first part,” Trump claimed.
“Nobody knew that that was in the end,” he said. “If they would have looked, they would have seen it, and probably they would have had the sense to take it down.”
He refused to apologize for the video despite backlash, including from Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina who said it was “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”
A senior administration official had previously told CNN “a White House staffer erroneously made the post” and that it was taken down once discovered.
At the time, Leavitt said the racist post was “from an internet meme” and called the backlash to it “fake outrage.”
The claims of racism continued to haunted Trump after his tribute after the death of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson on Tuesday.
“Despite the fact that I am falsely and consistently called a Racist by the Scoundrels and Lunatics on the Radical Left, Democrats ALL, it was always my pleasure to help Jesse along the way,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
Asked on Wednesday in the White House about exactly “where or when” Trump believes he’s falsely been called a racist, Leavitt scoffed, “You’re kidding, right?”
“I will pull you a plethora of examples,” Leavitt said. “I’m going to get my team in that room to start going through the internet of radical Democrats throughout the years, who have accused this president falsely of being a racist.”
The White House’s Rapid Reponse 47 X account then posted a video of former CNN host Don Lemon stating, “The President of the United States is racist. A lot of us already knew that.”
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