The White House has responded to criticism after Donald Trump shared a video on Truth Social that included imagery depicting former president Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes.
The 62-second video, which focuses on allegations about voting machines during the 2020 U.S. presidential election, shows the Obamas’ faces briefly superimposed onto the bodies of apes near the end of the clip. The segment appears for about one second while the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” plays. A watermark from X user @XERIAS_X, a pro-Trump account, is visible over that portion of the video.
The post prompted swift backlash from political figures and commentators. Obama was the first Black president of the United States, and depictions of Black public figures as primates have long been associated with racist caricature.
“Disgusting behavior by the President,” California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote in a post reacting to the video. “Every single Republican must denounce this. Now.”
The X account Republicans Against Trump also criticised the post, writing: “Trump just posted a video on Truth Social that includes a racist image of Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys. There’s no bottom.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded in a statement shared with Newsweek, rejecting the backlash but not directly addressing claims that the imagery echoed racist tropes.
“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” she said. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
Leavitt also shared a longer video posted by the same X account in October, which appears to be the source of the clip. In that version, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” plays while various political figures and celebrities are portrayed as different animals, with Trump depicted as a lion. Others shown include former vice president Kamala Harris as a tortoise, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as a meerkat, and Whoopi Goldberg as a hippopotamus.
Trump’s use of social media has repeatedly drawn scrutiny. In 2021, he was banned from Facebook and what was then known as Twitter, now X, following the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. He later launched Truth Social, and his Facebook and X accounts were eventually reinstated.
The video was shared alongside renewed claims by Trump about irregularities in the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden. Biden previously served as Obama’s vice president from 2009 to 2017. Trump had earlier defeated Hillary Clinton to win the presidency in 2017.
In the clip, Phil Waldron, described as a cybersecurity expert, alleges that several key states stopped counting votes simultaneously during the election and claims that voting machines were used for election rigging. He asserts that when counting resumed, there was a surge in votes favouring Biden.
“When reporting and counting resumed, a massive spike occurred that favoured Joe Biden,” Waldron said.
Trump posted the video twice on his platform. The Obamas appear only at the end of the footage, shown as AI-generated apes dancing to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” a song popularised through Disney’s The Lion King franchise.
The video has continued to generate outrage online, with many social media users accusing the president of promoting racist imagery, while the White House has characterised the criticism as exaggerated.
