Trump refuses to apologize over Obama meme that appeared on his Truth Social: ‘No, I didn’t make a mistake’

Near the end of the roughly one-minute clip posted on the account that largely focused on voting machine concerns, the video, apparently a screen recording, automatically scrolled to a short clip of the Obamas in the monkey depiction for a few seconds. Trump’s team removed the post within about 12 hours, with White House officials saying a staffer had “erroneously” shared it without full vetting.

Trump declined to apologize over the incident and said, "I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine. It was a very strong post in terms of voter fraud. Nobody knew that that was in the end. If they would have looked, they would have seen it, and probably they would have had the sense to take it down.”

When asked if he would apologize over the clip, he said, "No, I didn’t make a mistake," and added that it appeared to be a "take off of The Lion King."

Major media organizations seized the clip, some without talking about the broader context of the post. Democratic leaders immediately condemned the post as racist, with some Republican lawmakers also condemning the post.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt struck back at left-wing media as well as Democrats, calling the reaction to the video “fake outrage.”

"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,” Leavitt said.

The full video that depicted the Obamas as monkeys also depicted a number of other Democrat politicians as different animals, with Trump as the “King of the Jungle” in the Lion King.