White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s bold claim regarding President Donald Trump’s social media posts is raising new questions about a racist video featured on his account earlier this month.
On Wednesday, Leavitt was asked about a post on Trump’s Truth Social account that criticized Britain’s plan to turn over the Chagos Islands to Mauritius while also securing a 99-year lease to keep a joint U.K.–U.S. military base on Diego Garcia.
“The post should be taken as the policy of the Trump administration,” she said. “It’s coming straight from the horse’s mouth. When you see it on Truth Social, you know it’s directly from President Trump.”
Leavitt called that the “beauty” of Trump’s presidency and a sign of his “transparency.”
Just one problem: Her statement conflicts with Trump’s claim about a racist video featured on his Truth Social account earlier this month that depicted former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as a chimpanzee and a gorilla. The video was denounced by Democrats and Republicans alike, and Trump later deleted it. But he also never apologized, claiming it wasn’t his fault.
“I didn’t do it, by the way,” Trump told reporters while aboard Air Force One on Feb. 6. “This was done by somebody else.”
Trump said he had seen part of the video, which he claimed was about “fraudulent elections,” and then passed it on without seeing the racist part.
“I guess probably nobody reviewed the end of it,” he said. “Somebody slipped and missed a very small part.”
Trump’s critics noted the glaring inconsistency and fired back on X: