US President Donald Trump insisted he had nothing to apologise for, even after he deleted his post in which a video clip portrayed former President Barack Obama and the former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.

The clip, set to The Lion Sleeps Tonight, was spliced near the end of a 62-second video that promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and was among a flurry of links posted by Trump late on Thursday night. It was the latest in a pattern by Trump of promoting offensive imagery and slurs about Black Americans and others.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Friday, Trump said he only saw the beginning of the video. “I just looked at the first part, it was about voter fraud in some place, Georgia,” Trump said. “I didn’t see the whole thing.”

He then tried to deflect blame, suggesting he had given the link to someone else to post. “I gave it to the people, generally they’d look at the whole thing but I guess somebody didn’t,” he told reporters.

Still, Trump offered no contrition when pressed. “No, I didn’t make a mistake,” he said.

The White House response to the video over the course of the day — from defiance to retreat to doubling down — was a remarkable glimpse into an administration trying to control the damage in the face of widespread outrage, including from the president’s own party.

The clip was in line with Trump’s history of making degrading remarks about people of colour, women and immigrants, and he has for years singled out the Obamas. Across Trump’s administration, racist images and slogans have become common on government websites and accounts, with the White House, Labor Department and Homeland Security Department all having promoted posts that echo white supremacist messaging.

But the latest video struck a nerve that appeared to take the White House by surprise. The depiction of Obamas as apes perpetuates a racist trope, historically used by slave traders and segregationists to dehumanise Black people and justify lynchings.

New York Times News Service