After a strong backlash over a racist video of the Obamas that was posted to President Donald Trump‘s account on Truth Social, the video has been deleted.
A White House official told Variety that a staffer had erroneously made the post and that it has been taken down. The video, showing Michelle and Barack Obama‘s heads superimposed on the bodies of apes dancing in a jungle setting to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” had been on Trump’s Truth Social page for nearly 12 hours.
The video’s deletion came just a few hours after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had defended the Trump post as merely an “internet meme.”
Leavitt had previously said, “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 original video that the Obama animation came from, as cited by the White House, portrayed Trump as a lion. Barack and Michelle Obama were depicted as grinning, dancing apes. Other 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.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s press office on X had called the video post with the Obamas as apes “disgusting behavior by the President” and called on “every single Republican” to “denounce this.”
Sen. Tim Scott (R-South Carolina), who is the only Black GOP member of the Senate, wrote in a post on X Friday morning, “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it.”
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From Variety US