TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — The sheriff investigating the apparent abduction of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie’s mother said Friday he was frustrated that a camera at Nancy Guthrie ’s home wasn’t able to capture images of anyone the day she went missing.
Investigators have found that the home’s doorbell camera was disconnected early Sunday and that software data recorded movement at the home minutes later. But Nancy Guthrie did not have an active subscription, so none of the footage was able to be recovered.
Click to Gallery
This image provided by the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, on Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, shows a missing person alert for Nancy Guthrie. (Pima County Sheriff’s Department via AP)
Members of the press work in the neighborhood near the home of Nancy Guthrie, the missing mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026, in Tucson, Ariz. (AP Photo/Caitlin O'Hara)
The home of Nancy Guthrie, the missing mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie, is seen from above, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026, in Tucson, Ariz. (AP Photo/Caitlin O'Hara)
Pima County, Ariz., Sheriff Chris Nanos speaks with The Associated Press, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026, in Tucson, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ty ONeil)
“It is concerning, it’s actually almost disappointing because you’ve got your hopes up,” Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told The Associated Press in an interview at the department’s headquarters. “OK, they got an image. ‘Well, we do, but we don’t.’”
The frantic search for 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie has entered a sixth day. Authorities have not identified any suspects or ruled anyone out, Nanos said at a news conference Thursday.
Authorities think she was taken against her will from her home just outside Tucson over the weekend. DNA tests showed blood on Guthrie’s front porch was a match to her, Nanos has said.
President Donald Trump, speaking on Air Force One, said the investigation into Guthrie’s disappearance was going “very well.”
“We have some clues that I think are very strong,” Trump said, while en route to his Florida estate. “We have some things that may be coming out reasonably soon.”
Investigators were back in Nancy Guthrie's neighborhood on Friday.
The county sheriff's department posted on social media that they were restricting access to the road in front of the home to give investigators space. They directed media organizations staked out there to move.
The Catalina Foothills Association, a neighborhood group, told residents in a letter that authorities were resuming searches in the area immediately.
"I know we all stand together in our collective disbelief and sadness and greatly appreciate your willingness to speak with law enforcement, share camera images and allow searches of your properties,” the president of the association said in the letter.
The sheriff said Thursday that investigators have not given up on trying to retrieve footage from the home.
“I wish technology was as easy as we believe it is, that here’s a picture, here’s your bad guy. But it’s not,” Nanos told the AP. “There are pieces of information that come to us from these tech groups that say ‘this is what we have and we can’t get anymore.’”
The sheriff said he had no new information about purported ransom letters sent to some media outlets, saying that the FBI is handling that side of the investigation.
Tucson TV station KOLD said on Friday it received a new message, via email, tied to the Guthrie case. The station said it couldn’t disclose its contents. The FBI said it was aware of a new message and was reviewing its authenticity.
KOLD was one of the media outlets that received a ransom message earlier in the week.
Concern about Nancy Guthrie's condition is growing because authorities say she needs daily medicine that’s vital to her health. She was said to have a pacemaker and dealt with high blood pressure and heart issues, according to sheriff’s dispatcher audio on broadcastify.com.
“Her conditions, I would imagine, are worsening day by day" Nanos said. "She requires medication. And I have no way of knowing whether they’re getting that medication to her.”
The sheriff acknowledged that investigators are not sharing everything they know about what happened.
“That’s not how we do police investigations. There has to be some control of your case,” Nanos said, noting that authorities have shared more as the case proceeded.
Savannah Guthrie, the longtime host of NBC’s morning show “Today,” and her two siblings released an emotional video message Wednesday to her mother’s kidnapper, saying they were ready to talk but wanted proof their mom was alive. Camron Guthrie repeated the family’s plea in a video posted Thursday.
“Whoever is out there holding our mother, we want to hear from you. We haven’t heard anything directly,” he said.
It’s unclear if all of the ransom notes were identical. Heith Janke, the FBI chief in Phoenix, said details included a demand for money with a deadline that passed Thursday evening and a second deadline for Monday if the first one wasn’t met. At least one note mentioned a floodlight at Guthrie’s home and an Apple watch, Janke said.
The kidnapping captured the attention of Americans, including Trump, who said he was directing federal authorities to help with the investigation.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said Friday that federal authorities are assisting Arizona officials, but she declined to offer details.
This image provided by the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, on Monday, Feb. 2, 2026, shows a missing person alert for Nancy Guthrie. (Pima County Sheriff’s Department via AP)
Members of the press work in the neighborhood near the home of Nancy Guthrie, the missing mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026, in Tucson, Ariz. (AP Photo/Caitlin O'Hara)
The home of Nancy Guthrie, the missing mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie, is seen from above, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026, in Tucson, Ariz. (AP Photo/Caitlin O'Hara)
Pima County, Ariz., Sheriff Chris Nanos speaks with The Associated Press, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026, in Tucson, Ariz. (AP Photo/Ty ONeil)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s racist social media post featuring former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as primates in a jungle was deleted Friday after a backlash from both Republicans and Democrats who criticized the video as offensive.
Trump said later Friday that he won't apologize for the post. “I didn't make a mistake,” he said.
The Republican president’s Thursday night post was blamed on a staffer after widespread backlash, from civil rights leaders to veteran Republican senators, for its treatment of the nation’s first Black president and first lady. A rare admission of a misstep by the White House, the deletion came hours after press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed “fake outrage” over the post. After calls for its removal — including by Republicans — the White House said a staffer had posted the video erroneously.
The post was part of a flurry of overnight activity on Trump's Truth Social account that amplified his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, despite courts around the country and Trump's first-term attorney general finding no evidence of systemic fraud.
Trump has a record of intensely personal criticism of the Obamas and of using incendiary, sometimes racist, rhetoric — from feeding the lie that Obama was not a native-born U.S. citizen to crude generalizations about majority-Black countries.
The post came in the first week of Black History Month and days after a Trump proclamation cited “the contributions of black Americans to our national greatness” and “the American principles of liberty, justice, and equality.”
An Obama spokeswoman said the former president, a Democrat, had no response.
Nearly all of the 62-second clip appears to be from a conservative video alleging deliberate tampering with voting machines in battleground states as 2020 votes were tallied. At the 60-second mark is a quick scene of two jungle primates, with the Obamas’ smiling faces imposed on them.
Those frames originated from a separate video, previously circulated by an influential conservative meme maker. It shows Trump as “King of the Jungle” and depicts Democratic leaders as animals, including Joe Biden, who is white, as a jungle primate eating a banana.
“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” Leavitt said by text.
Disney's 1994 feature film that Leavitt referenced is set on the savannah, not in the jungle, and it does not include great apes.
“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public,” Leavitt added.
By noon, the post had been taken down, with responsibility placed on a Trump subordinate.
Trump, answering questions from reporters accompanying him aboard Air Force One on Friday night, said the video was about fraudulent elections and that he liked what he saw.
“I liked the beginning. I saw it and just passed it on, and I guess probably nobody reviewed the end of it,” he said. “Anytime I see that stuff and when it’s credible, you put it up. But somebody slipped and missed a very small part.”
Asked if he condemned the racist parts of the video, Trump said, “Of course I do.”
The White House explanation raises questions about control of Trump’s social media account, which he's used to levy import taxes, threaten military action, make other announcements and intimidate political rivals. The president often signs his name or initials after policy posts.
The White House did not immediately respond to an inquiry about how posts are vetted and when the public can know when Trump himself is posting.
Mark Burns, a pastor and a prominent Trump supporter who is Black, said Friday on X that he'd spoken “directly” with Trump and that he recommended to the president that he fire the staffer who posted the video and publicly condemn what happened.
“He knows this is wrong, offensive, and unacceptable,” Burns posted.
Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., told The Associated Press she does “not buy the White House's commentary.”
“If there wasn’t a climate, a toxic and racist climate within the White House, we wouldn’t see this type of behavior regardless of who it’s coming from,” Clarke said, adding that Trump “is a racist, he’s a bigot, and he will continue to do things in his presidency to make that known.”
Trump and White House social media accounts frequently repost memes and artificial intelligence-generated videos. As Leavitt did Friday, Trump allies typically cast them as humorous.
This time, condemnations flowed from across the spectrum — along with demands for an apology that had not come by late afternoon.
At a Black History Month market in Harlem, the historically Black neighborhood in New York City, vendor Jacklyn Monk said Trump’s post was embarrassing even if it was eventually deleted. “The guy needs help. I'm sorry he's representing our country. … It’s horrible that it was this month, but it would be horrible if it was in March also.”
In Atlanta, Rev. Bernice King, daughter of the assassinated civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., resurfaced her father's words: “Yes. I'm Black. I'm proud of it. I'm Black and beautiful.” Black Americans, she said, “are beloved of God as postal workers and professors, as a former first lady and president. We are not apes.”
The U.S. Senate's lone Black Republican, Tim Scott of South Carolina, called on Trump to take down the post. “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” said Scott, who chairs Senate Republicans' midterm campaign arm.
Another Republican, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, is white but represents the state with the largest percentage of Black residents. Wicker called the post “totally unacceptable” and said the president should apologize.
Some Republicans who face tough reelections this November voiced concerns, as well. The result was an unusual cascade of intraparty criticism for a president who has enjoyed a stranglehold over fellow Republicans who stayed silent during previous Trump controversies for fear of a public spat with the president or losing his endorsement in a future campaign.
NAACP President Derrick Johnson called the video “utterly despicable” and pointed to Trump's wider political concerns that could help explain Republicans' willingness to speak out. Johnson asserted that Trump is trying anything to distract from economic conditions and attention on the Jeffrey Epstein case files.
“You know who isn’t in the Epstein files? Barack Obama,” he said. “You know who actually improved the economy as president? Barack Obama.”
There is a long history in the U.S. of powerful white figures associating Black people with animals, including apes, in demonstrably false, racist ways. The practice dates to 18th century cultural racism and pseudo-scientific theories used to justify the enslavement of Black people, and later to dehumanize freed Black people as uncivilized threats to white people.
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote in his famous text “Notes on the State of Virginia” that Black women were the preferred sexual partners of orangutans. President Dwight Eisenhower, discussing school desegregation in the 1950s, suggested white parents were rightfully concerned about their daughters being in classrooms with “big Black bucks.” Obama, as a candidate and president, was featured as a monkey or other primates on T-shirts and other merchandise.
In his 2024 campaign, Trump said immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” language similar to what Adolf Hitler used to dehumanize Jews in Nazi Germany.
During his first White House term, Trump called a swath of majority-Black, developing nations “shithole countries.” He initially denied saying it but admitted in December 2025 that he did.
When Obama was in the White House, Trump pushed false claims that the 44th president, who was born in Hawaii, was born in Kenya and constitutionally ineligible to serve. Trump, in interviews that helped endear him to conservatives, demanded that Obama prove he was a “natural-born citizen” as required to become president.
Obama eventually released birth records, and Trump finally acknowledged during his 2016 campaign, after having won the Republican nomination, that Obama was born in Hawaii. But immediately after, he said, falsely, that his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton started the birtherism attacks.
President Donald Trump speaks to reporters on the South Lawn before departing the White House, Friday, Feb. 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
FILE - Former President Barack Obama talks with then President-elect Donald Trump as Melania Trump reads the funeral program before the state funeral for former President Jimmy Carter at Washington National Cathedral in Washington, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
