Trump shares video of Obamas as apes in Truth Social post
FILE - President Barack Obama speaks while meeting with President-elect Donald Trump (L) following a meeting in the Oval Office November 10, 2016 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump shared a video depicting the Obamas as apes in a series of late-night social media posts Thursday.
The clip appears near the end of a minute-long video boasting falsehoods about the 2020 election. It was posted at 11:44 p.m. ET Thursday.
What does the video show?
What we know:
The video, shared late Thursday night on Trump’s Truth Social account, discusses conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Near the end of the video, a short clip of the Obamas portrayed as apes is spliced in with "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" playing in the background.
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The short clip appears to be part of a longer, AI-generated video shared in October on X called "President Trump: King of the Jungle." The longer video shows other Democrats depicted as various animals, like former President Joe Biden and former Vice President Kamala Harris as zebras.
Trump was shown as a lion, and the video ended with the animals bowing down to him.
What we don't know:
Former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama have not yet responded publicly to the president’s post.
Why you should care:
The ape comparison is described by The New York Times as "one of the oldest and most profoundly racist slanders in American history."
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"Historical racist images and books dehumanizing African Americans in the 19th and early 20th century relied heavily on the Negro-ape metaphor, which was used to stereotype Blacks as lazy, dim and aggressive," said Phillip Atiba Solomon, the lead author of a 2008 study about the connection between discrimination and comparing Black people to apes. "Such dehumanization and animal imagery have been used for centuries to justify violence against many oppressed groups."
Obama, as a candidate and the country's first Black president, was sometimes featured as a primate on T-shirts and other merchandise.
Video sparks outrage
What they're saying:
California Gov. Gavin Newsom and other prominent Democrats were quick to decry the post. U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican, called it "the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House."
"Praying it was fake," Scott wrote. "The President should remove it."
"Disgusting behavior by the President," Newsom’s office wrote on X. "Every single Republican must denounce this. Now."
"Let it haunt Trump and his racist followers that future Americans will embrace the Obamas as beloved figures while studying him as a stain on our history," Ben Rhodes, a former deputy National Security Advisor under Obama, shared on X.
"Trump is a vile racist old man," Rep. Herb Conaway, D-N.J., said on X.
White House responds
The other side:
In a statement released Friday, the White House called widespread criticism of the video "fake outrage."
"This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in the statement.
Axios asked Leavitt whether Trump would remove the video or issue an apology, but she declined to answer.
Trump's Obama attacks
The backstory:
Trump has a history of intense, personal criticism of the Obamas.
When Obama was in the White House, Trump advanced the false claims that the 44th president, who was born in Hawaii, was born in Kenya and was constitutionally ineligible to serve. Trump repeatedly demanded that Obama produce birth records and prove he was a "natural-born citizen" as required to become president.
Obama eventually released his Hawaii records. Trump finally acknowledged during his 2016 campaign, after having won the Republican nomination, that Obama was born in Hawaii.
The Source: This report includes information from President Trump’s Truth Social Account, politicians’ posts on X, The White House, The New York Times, Axios, Phillip Atiba Solomon and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The Associated Press contributed.