Feb 7, 2026, 3:48 p.mFeb 7, 2026, 3:48 p.m
US President Donald Trump does not want to apologize for a racist post on his social media account. The post has now been deleted – but there is still huge outrage over the video in which former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle are depicted as monkeys.
This is the most racist thing he has ever seen from this White House, wrote black Republican Senator Tim Scott on When asked about this, he told journalists: “No, I didn’t make a mistake.”
Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it. https://t.co/gADoM13ssZ
— Tim Scott (@votetimscott) February 6, 2026
Instead, on Friday (local time) he claimed to journalists on the government plane Air Force One that he was the “least racist president you have had in a long time”. The US President has often attracted attention with racist comments.
Some examples.
December 2025: Trump calls people from Somalia trash
The Republican describes Somalia as a miserable country and people from the East African country as garbage. «I don’t want them in our country. I’m honest. Some might say, “Oh, that’s not politically correct.” I don’t care. I don’t want them in our country,” Trump said at the end of a Cabinet meeting. The US could go one way or the other, “and we will go down the wrong path if we continue to let garbage into our country.” There is a large Somali community in the state of Minnesota, which is at the center of the Trump administration’s deportation policy.
The US President also repeatedly attacks the black MP Ilhan Omar. Given her Somali roots, he has often suggested to the US citizen that she should “go back” to Somalia. At times he also described the left-wing MP as “nasty” or made fun of the Muslim woman’s headscarf.
September 2024: Trump claims migrants eat pets
In a TV duel against Democrat Kamala Harris, Trump, as the Republican presidential candidate, accused migrants of eating pets. “In Springfield they eat the dogs – the people who came here – they eat the cats. They eat the pets of the people who live there,” he said, without providing any evidence to support the claim. Trump was referring to a statement by his vice presidential candidate JD Vance, who had previously made allegations that migrants from Haiti were stealing and eating pets in Springfield, his home state of Ohio.
Trump on Harris in July 2024: “Suddenly turned black.”
As the Republican presidential candidate, Trump sparked outrage with a bizarre attack on his then-opponent Kamala Harris. For a long time, Harris advertised exclusively with her Indian heritage and then “suddenly became black,” said Trump during an appearance before the Association of Black Journalists in Chicago. “She was always of Indian descent and only advertised her Indian descent,” Trump said. «I didn’t know she was black until she suddenly became black a few years ago. And now she wants to be known as Black,” he continued. He respected both, he added. Harris is the first woman, the first Black and the first Asian American to take the oath as US Vice President.
What Trump says about the video on his account
In the current case, Trump said he only watched the beginning of the video. He assumes that at the end there was something that people didn’t like – he didn’t like it either, but he didn’t see it.
When asked whether he condemned the racist content of the video, Trump said: “Of course I do.” The White House initially tried to justify the post with its racist depiction. Spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt wrote in a statement that was broadcast by the TV station CNN, for example, that the mock outrage should stop. It is an excerpt from an Internet meme video in which Trump is depicted as king of the jungle and the Democrats as characters from the classic film “The Lion King”.
The post was later deleted from Trump’s account and the blame was placed on an employee who had mistakenly published the post.
The Obama depiction was part of a post on Trump’s account about alleged manipulation in the 2020 election, which Trump lost. After about a minute, the Obamas’ faces with monkey bodies appeared in a short interlude to the tune of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” Democrat Obama is the first black person to be elected President of the United States. He was in office from 2009 to 2017. (sda/dpa)