UPDATE, 12:15 p.m. ET: The post with the video in question on Trump’s Truth Social account was deleted Friday morning. The White House blamed it on an unidentified staff member who had “erroneously” shared it to the president’s account.
President Donald Trump posted a racist video to his Truth Social account late Thursday with an AI-generated video of the Obamas as apes.
The 62-second video, shared at 11:44 p.m. ET by the U.S. president, mostly runs through a conspiracy theory about the 2020 election alleging that voting machines in certain battleground states were rigged to favor Joe Biden. In the final few seconds of the segment, Barack and Michelle Obama are shown with their heads superimposed on ape bodies, smiling and dancing in a jungle setting to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”
As of Friday morning, the clip was still available on Trump’s account.
In a response to a request for comment from Variety, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an emailed statement, “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.”
The full AI video that the White House cited was posted in October 2025. In addition to portraying the Obamas as apes, Trump is shown as a lion. Democrats featured in the video included Joe Biden as a baboon, Kamala Harris as a tortoise, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer as a zebra, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as a meerkat, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a donkey, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as a hyena, and Hillary Clinton as a warthog.
The watermark on the “Lion King” video indicated it was created an account called @xerias_x. That’s the same account that made the AI-generated video Trump shared in October 2025 on Truth Social showing Trump as a king in a fighter jet dropping a huge payload of fecal matter on “No Kings” protesters in New York City.
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California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office on X called the video post with the Obamas as apes “disgusting behavior by the President” and called on “every single Republican” to “denounce this.”
From Variety US