U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday night posted a racist AI video depicting former president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama as monkeys.
The clip of the Obamas was edited into a minute of spliced footage promoting conspiracy theories about debunked claims of 2020 U.S. election tampering, set to the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight.
Both Barack and Michelle’s faces were edited onto the bodies of apes. The post has since been removed from Truth Social.
A White House staffer erroneously made the post and it has been taken down, a White House official confirmed.
The clip of the Obamas was reportedly taken from a video posted by an X user last October with the caption “President Trump: King of the Jungle” and a lion emoji, the New York Times wrote.
In that video, several high-profile political figures — including Hillary Clinton, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Zohran Mamdani, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris — were depicted as zebras, giraffes and other animals, while Trump appeared as a lion, whom the rest bowed down to.
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Addressing the press Friday morning, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “This is 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,” reported AFP White House Correspondent Danny Kemp.
Portraying the Obamas as apes draws on a racist stereotype historically used by slave traders to dehumanize Black people and excuse violence against them. Trump posted the video near the beginning of Black History Month, which takes place in February every year and honours the history and achievements of Black people, while addressing the legacy of slavery and racism.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) said in an X post that the video served as a “stark reminder of how Trump and his followers truly view people. And we’ll remember that in November,” when the midterm elections take place.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom condemned the president’s use of openly racist imagery, calling his behaviour “disgusting” and urging Republicans to “denounce” it.
U.S. Senator from South Carolina Tim Scott said in an X post that the video was “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” and urged the president to remove it.
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Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders denounced the “disgustingly racist video” in an X post and queried whether his Republican colleagues would “continue to bend the knee to a racist, authoritarian president.”
In response to Trump’s post, Ben Rhodes, an author and former official in the Obama administration, said the president was “a stain” on American history.
“Let it haunt Trump and his racist followers that future Americans will embrace the Obamas as beloved figures,” he also wrote.
Trump shared more than 60 posts on Truth Social on Thursday night, including election conspiracy propaganda as well as calls to add his face to Mount Rushmore.
The president has a history of targeting marginalized communities. Most recently, he said Somali nationals living in the U.S. were “garbage” and that Somalia is not a real country.
This rhetoric came ahead of his administration’s anti-immigration crackdown in Minnesota, which is home to a large population of Somali immigrants, a small group of whom was found to have committed fraud in state-run programs.
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