WASHINGTON —President Donald Trump’s social media post featuring a video about election conspiracy theories and a racist depiction of former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as primates in a jungle has been deleted.
The Thursday night post was deleted Friday and blamed on a staffer after widespread backlash, from civil rights leaders to veteran Republican senators, for its treatment of the nation’s first Black president and first lady.
On his social media page, Kansas U.S. Senator Jerry Moran was critical of the President's post.
The deletion of the post is a rare admission of a misstep by the White House and came hours after press secretary Karoline Leavitt said there was nothing offensive about the post. An Obama spokesperson said the former president, a Democrat, had no response.
The White House released audio of two statements from the Presdient on the controversy.
Trump said later Friday that he won’t apologize for the post. “I didn’t make a mistake,” he said.
-The Associated Press contributed to this report.