White House Responds to Controversial Trump Video Featuring Obamas as Apes
The White House has issued a statement addressing widespread criticism after former President Donald Trump shared a video on his Truth Social platform that included imagery depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes. The 62-second video, which primarily focuses on unsubstantiated allegations about voting machine irregularities during the 2020 U.S. presidential election, briefly superimposes the Obamas' faces onto the bodies of dancing apes near the conclusion of the clip.
Racist Imagery Sparks Immediate Political Condemnation
The controversial segment appears for approximately one second while the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight plays in the background. A visible watermark from X user @XERIAS_X, identified as a pro-Trump account, overlays that portion of the video. The post prompted swift and severe backlash from political figures and commentators across the United States. Given that Barack Obama served as the nation's first Black president, depictions of Black public figures as primates have historically been associated with deeply offensive racist caricatures and stereotypes.
Disgusting behavior by the President, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared in a social media post reacting to the video. Every single Republican must denounce this. Now. The X account Republicans Against Trump also strongly criticized the post, stating: Trump just posted a video on Truth Social that includes a racist image of Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys. There's no bottom.
White House Press Secretary Dismisses Criticism as Fake Outrage
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to the growing controversy through a statement shared with Newsweek, rejecting the backlash while not directly addressing specific claims that the imagery echoed racist tropes. This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King, Leavitt explained. Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.
Leavitt additionally shared a longer video originally posted by the same X account in October, which appears to be the source of the controversial clip. In that extended version, The Lion Sleeps Tonight plays while various political figures and celebrities are portrayed as different animals, with Trump depicted as a lion. Other notable individuals shown include former Vice President Kamala Harris as a tortoise, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as a meerkat, and actress Whoopi Goldberg as a hippopotamus.
Trump's History of Controversial Social Media Use
Donald Trump's utilization of social media platforms has repeatedly drawn intense scrutiny throughout his political career. In 2021, he was banned from Facebook and what was then known as Twitter, now X, following the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters. He subsequently launched his own platform, Truth Social, and his accounts on Facebook and X were eventually reinstated at later dates.
The video was shared alongside renewed claims by Trump regarding alleged irregularities in the 2020 election, which he lost to current President Joe Biden. Biden previously served as Obama's vice president from 2009 to 2017. Trump had earlier defeated Hillary Clinton to win the presidency in 2016.
Video Content and Allegations About 2020 Election
Within the clip, Phil Waldron, described as a cybersecurity expert, alleges that several key states stopped counting votes simultaneously during the election and claims that voting machines were utilized for election rigging purposes. He asserts that when counting resumed, there was a significant surge in votes favoring Joe Biden. When reporting and counting resumed, a massive spike occurred that favoured Joe Biden, Waldron stated in the video.
Trump posted the video twice on his Truth Social platform. The Obamas appear only at the very end of the footage, shown as AI-generated apes dancing to The Lion Sleeps Tonight, a song popularized through Disney's The Lion King franchise. The video has continued to generate substantial outrage across online platforms, with numerous social media users accusing the former president of promoting racist imagery, while the White House has consistently characterized the criticism as exaggerated and politically motivated.
