Vance breaks silence on Trump’s racist video of the Obamas: ‘It’s not a real controversy’
· Yahoo NewsVice President JD Vance has publicly revealed his thoughts on a video posted by President Donald Trump showing a racist depiction of former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes.
The post on Trump’s Truth Social site was online for 12 hours last week before the White House deleted the video claiming that a staffer “erroneously made the post,” according to multiple media outlets, including The Guardian.
While speaking with reporters before boarding Air Force Two during a foreign trip to Azerbaijan on Wednesday, Vance repeated the White House’s version of events, stating that a staffer posted the video without watching it entirely and then took it down.
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“It’s not a real controversy,” the vice president said, according to USA TODAY. “We have much, much more real problems to focus on.”
The roughly one-minute video focused on allegations regarding the 2020 election and featured a brief segment at the end where the former president and first lady were in a jungle setting with gorilla-like bodies and apes flying in the background.
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt dismissed the backlash after the video was taken down.
“This was an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” she told reporters. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
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According to The New York Times, Trump claimed 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 to journalists on Friday. “I didn’t see the whole thing.”
The president then claimed he gave the video 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 said. “No, I didn’t make a mistake.”
Vance was asked by reporters if he thought Trump should apologize for the video.
“For posting a video and then taking it down?” Vance said on Feb. 11, according to USA TODAY. “No, I don’t think so. I think people post things on social media, and if you post something you don’t like it, you can just take it down, and that’s what he did.”
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