President says he will not apologize for sharing a racist AI video on his account.

OK. Pay close attention. I am going to walk you through the exact sequence of decisions that every grown adult in the United States government made on this one. I am going to do it slowly. I am going to use italics.

Thursday night. An AI-generated video posted to the President’s Truth Social account depicts the former President of the United States and the former First Lady as apes. In a clip pushing a 2020 election conspiracy theory. The post stays up for nearly twelve hours. On the official account.

Friday morning. The press secretary of the United States, Karoline Leavitt, is asked about it from a White House podium. Her first answer, on the record, quote, is this is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King. The Lion King. Buddy. The Lion King. The Lion King is a Disney movie about a young lion who finds his courage with the help of a meerkat and a warthog. It is not about a former president of the United States. It is not about a former first lady. The King of the Jungle, in that movie, is a lion, and his cub is also a lion, and the enemy is another lion who has hyena friends. That is the entire cast. No apes. No Obamas. The press secretary said it was the Lion King because she had fifteen seconds to say something and Lion King had the lion in it.

Friday afternoon. The White House quietly removes the post. Twelve hours up. The official follow-up statement is, quote, a White House staffer erroneously made the post. This is the second official statement. Erroneously. The first one was Lion King.

Friday evening. The President of the United States, asked by a reporter on camera if he would apologize, says, quote, no, I didn’t make a mistake. That is the third official statement. So we now have, on the record, in twenty-four hours, three positions. Lion King. Staffer error. Not a mistake. I cannot tell you which of the three is correct because all three are speaking for the same President. All three contradict each other. All three are official.

Saturday. The former President, who has been deliberately silent since leaving office, breaks his silence to say, quote, the public is dealing with the clown show of social media and a majority of the American people find this behavior deeply troubling. That is the former President. That is the bar. When Barack Obama finds the current behavior of the country deeply troubling enough to break a six-year quiet, you have cleared the bar in novel ways.

Sunday. The Sunday shows lead with the racist video. The press secretary’s Lion King defense gets the graphics package. The graphics package shows Simba.

I have run a casino floor. I have managed a staff of forty with seven languages between them. Nobody on my staff, on their worst day, has ever stood at a podium and said the racist video is a Lion King reference. You know why? Because Mufasa would come back from the dead to correct them.

You ever notice how the man who promised to restore the dignity of the office has staff who defend the depictions by naming a Disney villain.

Funny. How. That. Works.