Washington DC - President Donald Trump shared a post with a racist video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys, sparking outrage across the political aisle Friday before deleting it in a rare backtrack.

The White House initially rejected "fake outrage" over the video shared on Trump's Truth Social account late Thursday night, only to then blame the post on an error by a staff member.

Democrats had slammed Trump as "vile" over the post about the Obamas – the first Black president and first lady in US history – while a senior Republican senator said the video was blatantly racist.

Near the end of the one-minute-long video promoting conspiracies about Republican Trump's 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, the Obamas were shown with their faces on the bodies of monkeys for about one second.

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The song The Lion Sleeps Tonight plays in the background when the Obamas appear.

The video, uploaded at 11.44 PM Thursday (0445 GMT Friday) amid a flurry of other posts, repeated false allegations that ballot-counting company Dominion Voting Systems helped steal the election from Trump.

At first, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt played down the row, saying the images were "from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King."

"Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public," Leavitt said in a statement to AFP.

But almost exactly 12 hours after the post appeared on Trump's account, there was an unusual concession from an administration that normally refuses to admit the slightest mistake.

"A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down," a White House official told AFP.

There was no immediate comment from the Obamas.

While Democrats immediately pounced on the post – Democratic Rep. Hakeem Jeffries called Trump "vile, unhinged and malignant" – it was the outrage from some members of Trump's own Republican party that appeared to trigger the about-face.

Tim Scott, the only Black Republican senator and a contender for the 2024 presidential nomination, called the video "the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House."

Scott said he was "praying it was fake" and called for Trump to remove it.

Roger Wicker, another Republican senator, said the post was "totally unacceptable. The president should take it down and apologize."