killings of two American citizens protesting against ICE agents<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/c8912e7cd667fd0b02331c45b9b6c600.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Michelle and Barack Obama have declined to comment on the post. (AP: Evan Vucci)<\/p>\n
During the election campaign, Trump pushed racist and untrue claims that Haitian migrants were “eating the dogs” in Ohio, and said former vice-president Kamala Harris “became Black”.<\/p>\n
The US president has also said immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of America \u2014 echoing white supremacy rhetoric.<\/p>\n
Despite all this, African Americans turned out to vote for Trump in significant numbers.<\/p>\n
According to Pew research, he nearly doubled his support among Black voters between 2020 and 2024, especially younger Black men.<\/p>\n
Now Trump claims that he has done more for Black Americans than any president before him.<\/p>\n
Republicans call post racist, ‘totally unacceptable’<\/p>\n
The backlash to this latest social media post was led by African American Senator Tim Scott, who was considered by Donald Trump a potential running mate for the 2024 election.<\/p>\n
The Republican has been a huge Trump supporter, but clearly this was a step too far for him.<\/p>\n
“Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” he posted on social media.<\/p>\n
“The President should remove it.”<\/p>\n
Another Republican Senator, Roger Wicker, joined that call.<\/p>\n
“This is totally unacceptable. The President should take it down and apologise,” he posted.<\/p>\n
At first, the White House did as it often does, go on the attack.<\/p>\n
![\"Karoline](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/8012b42413a6ed039d8dac62c89a5ee8.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Karoline Leavitt said the backlash to Trump’s post was “fake outrage”. (Reuters: Kevin Lamarque)<\/p>\n
“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said.<\/p>\n
“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”<\/p>\n
But clearly race does matter.<\/p>\n
The post was removed, and the White House changed its story, blaming an unnamed staffer for making the post in error.<\/p>\n
The US president told reporters on Air Force One that he only saw the start of the clip, which focused on voter fraud, and passed it to staffers to repost.<\/p>\n
Though he maintained he had no reason to apologise.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t make a mistake, I look at thousands of things, I looked at the beginning of it, it was fine,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Nobody knew that was in the end, if they would have looked, they would have seen it, and probably they would have the sense to take it down.<\/p>\n
“I spoke to Tim Scott, he was great, Tim is a great guy, he understood that 100 per cent.”<\/p>\n
Loading<\/p>\n
Trump is a prolific social media user.<\/p>\n
His website Truth Social is a central pillar of his political communication, where he regularly makes policy announcements and diplomatic statements signing off in full: “Thank you for your attention to this matter! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP”.<\/p>\n
So it is a strange idea that a mystery staffer was apparently in the White House with Donald Trump at a quarter to midnight, but responsible for only this single post.<\/p>\n
In a country with a tragic history of racial violence, even this “Teflon president” can cross a line.<\/p>\n
This social media backdown by Trump shows that when enough Republicans push back, the president can be influenced.<\/p>\n
It seems this president can be challenged. “Peak Trump” may have passed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US President Donald Trump has, until now, thrived in controversy. Immune to criticism, and convincing supporters that any…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379086,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[237813,11967,2490,43,56201,44,44610,89641,5637,1314,237814,41,39,42,40,11974,446],"class_list":["post-463870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-apes","tag-barack-obama","tag-donald-trump","tag-headlines","tag-michelle-obama","tag-news","tag-post","tag-racist","tag-republican","tag-social-media","tag-tim-scott","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-truth-social","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463870\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}