Late on Thursday evening, President Donald Trump shared a video on Truth Social that depicts former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes.
The post, which was online all of Friday morning, appears to have been removed from the president’s page.
Toward the end of an unrelated video alleging interference in the 2020 presidential election, a clip that is around 2 seconds long features the first Black president and his wife on the bodies of apes as “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” plays in the background. That clip comes from a longer video that a meme account posted in October.
Mother Jones asked the White House a list of questions, including how Trump found the video, if he was aware that the 2020 election video contained that imagery when he posted it, and if the video depicting the Obamas was playing on the president’s device. The press office did not respond to specific questions but instead sent over a statement from White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
“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. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
The video clip posted by the President just before midnight on the East Coast drew immense backlash, including from some Republicans.
Sen. Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina, wrote on X: “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it.”
The Democrats X page also condemned the video, writing, “This is who Trump is: Sick, racist, and completely deranged.”
The original video of the Obamas was seemingly created by the same account that made the AI-generated video of President Trump flying a fighter jet and dropping feces on “No Kings” protesters. The user’s bio reads “God First | Trump ‘Fighter Jet Poop’ Guy.” In the full version of the video that Trump posted on Thursday, prominent Democrats are depicted as various animals, and President Trump’s head is on a lion with the caption, “King of the Jungle.” The Obamas are not the only Democrats included in this video. Former presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York, former president Joe Biden, and former vice president Kamala Harris all appear, among others.
The president’s Thursday post is the latest in a decades-long history of sharing or amplifying racist claims—from taking out a full-page ad in 1989 calling for the death penalty for the young Black and brown Central Park Five to boosting the Obama birtherism conspiracy theory for years. He has also not restricted this behavior to social media; during both of his terms, he has enacted policies that uniquely target Black people, such as a comprehensive attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the federal government and private sector that began with an executive order on his first day in office.
It’s unclear how the video came across the president’s screen, but the original creatoris celebrating. Under his initial post of the video, he shared a screenshot of Thursday’s Truth Social post.
Minutes before and minutes after sharing the video, which included the racist imagery of the former first family, President Trump had posted two videos about how the Republican Party is the best political home for Black people.
