United States President Donald Trump has condemned, but not apologised for, a video on his social media account depicting former president Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as apes, a post that triggered swift, bipartisan criticism for dehumanising people of African descent.
The White House first defended the post, then deleted it about 12 hours after it appeared.
"A White House staffer erroneously made the post," a White House official said, noting it had been taken down.
A Trump adviser said the president hadn't seen the video before it was posted late on Thursday, and ordered it taken down once he had.
Both officials declined to be named, and the White House didn't respond to a question about the staffer's identity.
However, on Friday night, Trump told reporters he had seen part of the video before an aide posted it to his account.
"I didn't see the whole thing," Trump said.
"I looked at the first part, and it was really about voter fraud in the machines, how crooked it is, how disgusting it is. Then I gave it to the people. Generally, they look at the whole thing. But I guess somebody didn't."
When asked by reporters if he condemned the clip, Trump said: "Of course I do".
However, he declined to apologise, saying, "I didn't make a mistake. I mean, I give — I look at a lot — thousands of things."
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt had earlier defended the post, describing the wave of negative reactions as "fake outrage".
The minute-long video shared on Trump's Truth Social network late on Thursday amplified false claims that his 2020 election defeat was the result of fraud.
Spliced into the video near its end was a brief, apparently AI-generated, clip of dancing primates superimposed with the Obamas' heads.
Trump has a history of sharing racist rhetoric and long promoted the false conspiracy theory that Obama, the president from 2009 to 2017, wasn't born in the US.
Speaking at a prayer breakfast on Thursday, Trump said Obama "was very bad" and a "terrible divider of our country".
Rare rebuke from Republicans
The post drew bipartisan criticism, including from Republican senator Tim Scott, a close Trump ally who is Black.
"Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House," Scott said on X.
"The President should remove it."
Other Republican politicians called on Trump to apologise and delete the post. Some Republicans also privately reached out to the White House about the video, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Prior to the post being deleted, Leavitt said it was "from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King".
Trump's clip included a song from the Disney musical.
A spokesperson for the Obamas declined to comment.
White supremacists have, for centuries, depicted people of African ancestry as monkeys as part of campaigns to dehumanise Black populations.
"Let it haunt Trump and his racist followers that future Americans will embrace the Obamas as beloved figures while studying him as a stain on our history," Ben Rhodes, a former Obama aide, posted on X.
Civil rights advocates have said Trump's rhetoric has become increasingly bold, normalised, and politically permissible.
"Donald Trump's video is blatantly racist, disgusting, and utterly despicable," Derrick Johnson, national president of the NAACP, a civil rights group, said in a statement.
"Voters are watching and will remember this at the ballot box."
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