What to Know
People have questions about President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s recent social media activity. And of course, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has had to attempt to answer (or not answer) those questions. Controversial posts from Trump administration officials, or even the official White House accounts, are nothing new. So the fact that people are now asking if the White House has “a social media problem” shows just how bad things have gotten. However, Leavitt insists that this apparent problem people have noticed does not actually exist.
First, Trump sparked outrage with his racist Truth Social post.
The post depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. At first, Leavitt defended it, claiming it was “from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King.” She also said, “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.” But the post was later deleted and blamed on a staffer.
Trump claimed that he “didn’t make a mistake.” He said he looks at lots of content and only watched part of the clip before sharing it with someone else who he supposedly believed would “look at the whole thing.”
He suggested that his staffer didn’t watch the whole clip either, and “probably they would have had the sense to take it down” if they had.
Then, Vance dealt with his own social media blunder.
Just days after Trump shared his racist Truth Social post, Vance shared a post about his time in Armenia that was later deleted. In the post, Vance said he visited the Armenian Genocide Memorial to “honor the victims of the Armenian genocide.” The Trump administration, however, does not use the terminology “Armenian genocide.” (The Biden administration did though.)
Once again, a staffer was blamed for this mistake. The staffer who reportedly wrote the post was not traveling with Vance.
So, who is making all of these social media mistakes?
People have questioned who manages the White House’s official social media accounts before, but these two back-to-back mistakes have exacerbated concerns about the Trump administration’s social media presence. During the press briefing on Tuesday, February 10, a reporter asked Leavitt about the mistakes, mentioning both Trump’s post and Vance’s before asking, “Does the White House have a social media problem at the moment?” The journalist also added, “Do you have an auto-posting problem that’s leading to these mistakes?”
Leavitt’s answer was short, and she didn’t comment on Trump’s racist post at all when responding. “No,” she said. “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.”
