The White House initially defended the video, posted to the President’s Truth Social website, accusing critics of “fake outrage” – but have now backed down
Donald Trump deleted a racist video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes following a wave of outrage over the social media post.
The White House initially defended the video, posted to the President’s Truth Social website, accusing critics of “fake outrage”.
But it was later removed from the page, with the White House saying: “A staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down.”
Trump has taken to posting and reposting dozens of videos, images and conspiracy theories to his own social platform – often late at night.
The clip, set to Tight Fit’s The Lion Sleeps Tonight, was edited into a longer video promoting Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election being stolen from him.
Despite widespread horror at the clip, the White House initially stood by the President’s post and left it on his page for more than 12 hours.
“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House Press Secretary said. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
The Mirror has chosen not to publish the offensive image depicting Barack and Michelle Obama.
Trump has repeatedly insulted and attacked President Obama, often using ‘dogwhistle’ remarks about his heritage.
For years during his presidency, he pushed a racist conspiracy theory that President Obama was not born in America, and often stresses his middle name “Hussain” when referring to him.
In a plaque written to go alongside a portrait of President Obama on the wall of the White House, Trump wrote that he was a “divisive” President, which many took as a reference to him being a person of colour.
Republican Senator Tim Scott, who is Black, was among those who criticised Trump’s post.
“Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it,” Scott, who chairs Senate Republicans’ midterm campaign team, said on social media.
The group Republicans Against Trump, a frequent social media critic of the president, wrote: “There’s no bottom.”
There is a long history in the US of powerful white figures associating Black people with animals, including apes, in false and racist ways.
The practice dates back to 18th century cultural racism and pseudo-scientific theories in which white people drew connections between Africans and monkeys to justify the enslavement of Black people in Europe and North America, and later to dehumanise freed Black people as an uncivilised threat to white people.
Trump’s own rhetoric has become increasingly racist in recent months.
He claimed during the 2024 campaign that immigration was “poisoning the blood of our country”.
And his most recent targets have been people of Somali descent, whom he has referred to as “garbage”.
“I don’t want ’em in our country,” he said in a speech in December (2025). “Their country’s no good for a reason.”