The White House has deleted a social media post in which the vice-president, JD Vance, referred to the Armenian genocide, prompting anger from members of the Armenian diaspora as well as opposition politicians across the US.
The post was made during Vance’s two-day trip to Armenia to mark a visit by Vance and his wife, Usha Vance, to a memorial for the up to 1.5 million Armenians killed by Ottoman troops more than a century ago. The now-deleted post on Vance’s official X account said he was visiting the memorial to honour “the victims of the Armenian genocide”.
It marked the first time the Trump administration had used the word genocide to describe the massacres. An aide to Vance later told reporters that the message had been posted in error on social media by staff who were not travelling with Vance.
It was the second time in the past week that the administration cited staff error to explain its social media content; last week, after Donald Trump sought to dismiss the uproar over a racist video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, the US president said it had been erroneously posted by a staffer.
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