By Yasin Gungor
ISTANBUL (AA)—US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said Sunday that President Donald Trump should apologize for sharing a video depicting former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes.
"He definitively needs to apologize," Jeffries told CNN when asked about the video Trump posted during Black History Month.
"It was a disgusting video, and the president was rightly and appropriately and forcefully denounced by people all across the country, Democrats and even a handful of Republicans, who finally showed some backbone in pushing back against the president's malignant bottom feeder like behavior," the Democratic leader said.
Trump on Friday condemned but refused to apologize for the since-deleted video, which appeared at the end of a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, reiterating his unproven voter fraud claims.
The brief clip placed widely smiling images of the Obamas' faces atop apes' bodies, perpetuating racist tropes against Black people as "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," popularized by Disney's The Lion King, played in the background.
The White House blamed a staffer for the post and removed it, but Trump said he does not need to apologize because he made no mistake.
Republican Sen. Roger Wicker from Mississippi, the state with the largest Black voter share, called it "totally unacceptable" and urged Trump to apologize.