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Donald Trump said on Friday he made the call to post a now-deleted video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys but deflected blame for the move, causing new speculation in his orbit about whether the blame lay with the president or his aide Natalie Harp.
The brief clip, shared late Thursday night on Trump’s Truth Social account, appeared in a video pushing conspiracies about the 2020 election. Invoking racist tropes, the video depicted the Obamas’ faces superimposed on the bodies of cartoon apes dancing to The Lion Sleeps Tonight.
Speaking later to reporters on Air Force One, Trump claimed he had briefly seen part of the video but then handed it off to an unidentified staffer to post. Trump said he would not fire the staffer in question but would not apologize because he did not make a mistake.
“No, I looked at the first part. It was really about voter fraud and the machines – how crooked it is, how disgusting it is,” Trump said. “Then I gave it to the people, generally they’d look at the whole thing but I guess somebody didn’t and they posted it. And then we deleted it.”
Trump’s recounting sparked speculation inside his orbit about the extent to which the president was responsible and which of his aides ultimately hit “send” on the post. Besides Trump, only two aides have access to his social media account, people familiar with the matter said: Dan Scavino and Harp.
Trump’s advisers quickly discounted Scavino, given he has been preoccupied lately with his new role running the presidential personnel office – and instead focused on Harp, who has previously been entangled in Trump’s communications.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about the intrigue at the end of a tumultuous day, which began with the press shop defending the post before it backtracked and blamed a staffer – a claim Trump also repeated in calls with Republican lawmakers.
In a call with Tim Scott, the only black Republican senator, who is also the chair of the national Republican senatorial committee and explicitly denounced the video as racist, Trump said it was a staffer’s mistake and that he would take the video down, CBS News reported.
The move to delete the video marked a rare reversal for Trump, whose instinct has long been to stand by even his most provocative statements – and given that the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, had earlier dismissed criticism of the video.
“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the king of the jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King,” Leavitt said. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
Harp, 35, is among Trump’s most devoted aides. She joined his 2024 re-election campaign at the outset, and quickly became known as “Human Printer” because she travels with the president carrying a portable printer and spare toner so she can hand him tweets and news articles in hard copy.
Over time, Harp established a broader role as a conduit of information to and from the president, relaying to him text messages, social media posts and news articles she believed he would appreciate.
But she has also been criticized by colleagues for showing poor judgment – for instance, when she sent an aggressive text to the Trump megadonor Miriam Adelson in the summer of 2024 criticizing her $100m Super PAC as being poorly managed, a person familiar with the matter said.
At various points, Harp’s proximity to Trump and her tendency to operate outside the formal chain of command have fueled resentment among other aides. More than once, people have suggested to Trump that she was a liability and sought any opportunity to force her ouster.
But Trump has consistently rebuffed those concerns and rewarded Harp for her close loyalty, elevating her at the White House. Harp is a regular presence in the Oval Office, and Trump’s advisers suggested it was unlikely there would be any repercussions for anyone over the episode.
