Donald Trump’s rare backdown on racist Obama post shows even the ‘Teflon president’ has…

US President Donald Trump has, until now, thrived in controversy.

Immune to criticism, and convincing supporters that any backlash is the “woke left” revelling in “political correctness”.

He has even survived making many previous racial slurs.

He rose to political prominence while peddling conspiracy theories about the former president Barack Obama’s citizenship and birthplace (when he was in fact born in Hawaii).

But Trump’s complete impunity and dominance, “Peak Trump”, may have passed.

He has just done something that a year ago would have been unthinkable: deleted a social media post.

During an after-dark social media binge, the president posted more than 70 items or videos, including one portraying Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes.

That sort of vile racist portrayal was often used in America in the 1960s, and has caused a furore when reposted by Trump.

It is the latest in a string of racial slurs.

In December, he described Somali immigrants as “garbage”, a precursor to a week-long immigration crackdown on that community in Minneapolis, which resulted in the killings of two American citizens protesting against ICE agents.

During the election campaign, Trump pushed racist and untrue claims that Haitian migrants were “eating the dogs” in Ohio, and said former vice-president Kamala Harris “became Black”.

The US president has also said immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of America — echoing white supremacy rhetoric.

Despite all this, African Americans turned out to vote for Trump in significant numbers.

According to Pew research, he nearly doubled his support among Black voters between 2020 and 2024, especially younger Black men.

Now Trump claims that he has done more for Black Americans than any president before him.

The backlash to this latest social media post was led by African American Senator Tim Scott, who was considered by Donald Trump a potential running mate for the 2024 election.

The Republican has been a huge Trump supporter, but clearly this was a step too far for him.

The President should remove it.”

Another Republican Senator, Roger Wicker, joined that call.

“This is totally unacceptable. The President should take it down and apologise,” he posted.

At first, the White House did as it often does, go on the attack.

This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said.

“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

But clearly race does matter.

The post was removed, and the White House changed its story, blaming an unnamed staffer for making the post in error.

The US president told reporters on Air Force One that he only saw the start of the clip, which focused on voter fraud, and passed it to staffers to repost.

Though he maintained he had no reason to apologise.

“I didn’t make a mistake, I look at thousands of things, I looked at the beginning of it, it was fine,” he said.

“Nobody knew that was in the end, if they would have looked, they would have seen it, and probably they would have the sense to take it down.

“I spoke to Tim Scott, he was great, Tim is a great guy, he understood that 100 per cent.”