Karoline Leavitt asked about White House's 'social media problem’ after ape and genocide posts were removed

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was pressed on Tuesday on whether the administration is facing a “social media problem” after two controversial posts, one from President Donald Trump’s Truth Social account and another from Vice President JD Vance’s X account, were posted and then deleted within days of each other.The question followed backlash over a Truth Social post shared by Trump last Thursday evening. The video repeated baseless conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and ended with a short clip showing former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama with their faces superimposed onto apes’ bodies. The post drew swift condemnation from lawmakers across party lines, media figures, and political commentators, who criticised it as racist.Leavitt initially defended the video, describing it as an “Internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle,” and dismissed criticism as “fake outrage.” However, shortly before noon ET on Friday, the post was removed. The White House later said the video had been shared by a still-unnamed staffer and described the post as “erroneous.”Days later, another deletion reignited scrutiny. On Tuesday, Vance’s official X account briefly posted a message that included a photo of the vice president and Second Lady Usha Vance at what was described as “a wreath laying ceremony at the Armenian Genocide memorial to honour the victims of the 1915 Armenian genocide.”

The tweet was subsequently deleted.An official from Vance’s office said the post was “posted in error” by a staffer who was not travelling with the vice president’s delegation. US under the Trump administration policy, which does not use the word “genocide” for the 1915 event. As per estimates of CNN, Armenian deaths range from 300,000 to 2 million between 1914 and 1923, with most figures falling between 600,000 and 1.5 million.

Ottoman authorities themselves estimated that 800,000 Armenians were killed between 1915 and 1918. Whether through mass killings or forced deportations, the Armenian population in Turkey dropped from roughly 2 million in 1914 to fewer than 400,000 by 1922.The Armenian National Committee of America sharply criticised the deletion of Vance’s post, calling it “disgraceful” and labelling it “a denialist action consistent with President Trump’s shameful retreat from honest American remembrance of a crime recognised by all 50 states, the US Congress, the White House, and more than a dozen of our NATO allies.”

The issue came to a head during Tuesday’s White House briefing, when Danny Kemp, the White House correspondent for Agence France-Presse, questioned Leavitt directly.“Today, the Vice President’s account posted and then deleted a tweet about the Armenian genocide, and then last week, President Trump’s Truth Social account posted and then deleted a racist video about the Obamas,” Kemp said. “And the White House, again, blamed that on a staffer. I wanted to ask you, does the White House have a social media problem at the moment? Do you have an auto-posting problem that’s leading to these mistakes?”“No,” Leavitt replied. “As for the Armenian tweet that you’re referring to, I would just refer you back to the White House’s message that was issued on Armenian Remembrance Day, and there’s been no change of policy at this time.”