Trump Faces Outrage Over Racist Video Depicting Obamas as Apes

Trump Shares Racist Video Depicting Obamas as Apes, Sparks Outrage

Fury erupted on Friday after President Donald Trump shared a video on his social media platform that depicts former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes. The incident has drawn swift and widespread condemnation from both Democrats and Republicans.

The clip appeared during one of the 79-year-old president’s increasingly frequent late-night posting sprees to his Truth Social account. It shows the laughing faces of the former president and first lady superimposed on the bodies of primates in a jungle setting, accompanied by the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

The imagery of the Obamas appears briefly at the end of a roughly minute-long video created by a third party that amplifies Trump’s repeated, but false, claim that he won the 2020 election. The video originated from a website called Patriot News Outlet, which is supportive of the Republican president.

By 8:30 a.m. ET on Friday, the post had garnered approximately 4,000 likes, but also significant outrage across the political spectrum for its use of a blatant racist trope targeting the nation’s first Black president and his wife.

The press office of California Governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, was among the first to condemn the post on X, stating, “Disgusting behavior by the President. Every single Republican must denounce this. Now.”

Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security advisor during the Obama administration, accused Trump of racism, writing on X, “Let it haunt Trump and his racist followers that future Americans will embrace the Obamas as beloved figures while studying him as a stain on our history.”

The group Republicans Against Trump, which has over a million followers on X and is comprised of party members disillusioned with the Trump administration, also weighed in shortly after the post appeared. They shared a screenshot of the video’s ending frame featuring the Obamas with the comment, “BREAKING: Trump just posted a video on Truth Social that includes a racist image of Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys. There’s no bottom.”

Democratic political strategist Adam Parkhomenko alluded to a 2024 allegation that Trump used a racial slur while hosting the TV show *The Apprentice*, stating, “This is overt racism. Full stop. There’s no ‘misinterpretation’ and no excuse. This is who he is, who he’s always been, and why he should never be anywhere near power again. And there’s a reason the tapes from *The Apprentice* have never been released.”

In a statement to the Guardian, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt attempted to downplay the outrage, linking the post to a separate right-wing account’s video shared in October. That video depicts Trump as a lion and various Democrats as other animals. Leavitt stated, “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.”

Friday’s post, which concludes with the unexplained flash of the Obamas’ faces, largely focuses on amplifying false and disproven claims that Dominion Voting Systems helped steal the 2020 presidential election from Trump through manipulated vote-counting machines. Dominion Voting Systems reached a April 18, 2023 settlement of $787.5 million with Fox News in a landmark defamation lawsuit related to these claims.

The White House initially blamed a staffer for the post, stating that it had been removed after backlash, including from GOP Senator Tim Scott, who called the post racist and urged Trump to take it down. However, the video had been online for nearly 12 hours before being removed. According to CNN, GOP lawmakers had contacted Trump directly to discuss the post.

The Obamas had no comment when reached by ABC News for a response.