Photo: Scott Applewhite/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images
Donald Trump launched his political career by pushing the racist Barack Obama birther conspiracy theory, and even without getting into his policies or mainstreaming of white supremacists and their ideology, you can find plenty of examples of Trump lobbing obviously racist attacks at his many foes.
Still, the White House could have plausibly claimed that Trump didn’t mean to post a stunningly racist video — which briefly shows Barack and Michelle Obama with their heads superimposed on monkeys — to Truth Social last night. Instead, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the video and slammed the “fake outrage.” Hours later, the post was deleted and the post was blamed on a White House staffer:
Trump went on a manic Truth Social spree last night. The president (or the White House staffer authorized to frantically post bizarre content to his feed in the wee hours of the morning?) posted and reposted content from MAGA accounts 66 times between 10:36 p.m. and 12:25 a.m., according to the Daily Beast’s tally. He shared dumb memes, diatribes promoting bogus voter-fraud conspiracies, videos claiming Trump was key in bringing down Jeffrey Epstein, and an AI-generated video of Obama being arrested in the Oval Office (which Trump has shared previously).
At first glance, the post in question doesn’t have anything to do with the Obamas. There’s a lot of text about election-rigging nonsense, then a video that purports to show evidence of tampering of a voting machine. But near the end of the 62-second video, a shot of the Obamas’ faces on primates flashes for about a second as the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” plays.
It’s entirely possible that Trump didn’t watch the video to the end or click it at all. But rather than claiming the racist image was posted by accident or apologizing (lol), Karoline Leavitt argued there is absolutely nothing wrong with it in a statement provided to news organizations.
“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.”
The brief clip of the Obamas is indeed from an older meme video by “Xerias,” the same creator behind that poop video Trump shared in October. As the Daily Beast explained:
The complete AI-generated video, which was first posted on X in October 2025, shows several other Democrats as animals, all bowing down to Trump at the end.
Joe Biden appears as a baboon; Kamala Harris as a tortoise; Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as a zebra; House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as a meerkat; Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a donkey; New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as a hyena; and Hillary Clinton as a warthog.
Still, depicting the Black former president and his wife as monkeys is still very obviously racist? But hey, you don’t have to take our word for it, or even Gavin Newsom’s. It’s so offensive that Trump’s pal Tim Scott, the only Black Republican senator, was (ludicrously) praying that the president didn’t actually share the very racist content, despite ample evidence that he did:
A few hours later, the post just disappeared from Trump’s feed (much like his scarily unhinged “medbed” post a few month ago). The White House didn’t say why, but maybe “there’s nothing wrong with depicting Black people as monkeys” actually isn’t the hill it wanted to die on.
This post was updated after the White House deleted the post and blamed it on a staffer.
