WASHINGTON. President Donald Trump on Friday posted and later deleted a video depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes, triggering immediate bipartisan condemnation and forcing even close Republican allies to publicly denounce the content as racist and unacceptable.
The video, shared on Trump’s Truth Social account, briefly superimposed the Obamas’ faces onto primate bodies in the closing seconds of a longer clip promoting unsubstantiated conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. The imagery echoed some of the oldest and most notorious racist tropes in American history.
Sen. Tim Scott, R S.C., the only Black Republican in the Senate and a longtime Trump ally, issued a blistering rebuke.
“Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” Scott wrote on X. “The President should remove it.”
The post was deleted a few hours later.
Only after the backlash escalated did the White House attempt to distance the president from the incident, claiming a staffer was responsible.
“A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down,” a White House official told The Hill.
That explanation did little to stem criticism, particularly as the administration initially defended the video rather than removing it. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed public outrage earlier in the day, calling the clip part of a Lion King meme and accusing critics of fake outrage.
Multiple Republicans rejected that defense outright.
Rep. Mike Lawler, R N.Y., whose district voted Democratic in 2024, said the post crossed an unmistakable line.
“The President’s post is wrong and incredibly offensive, whether intentional or a mistake, and should be deleted immediately with an apology offered,” Lawler said.
Sen. Roger Wicker, R Miss., chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called the incident totally unacceptable and said the president owed the public an apology.
Sen. Pete Ricketts, R Neb., emphasized that intent was irrelevant.
“Even if this was a Lion King meme, a reasonable person sees the racist context to this,” Ricketts wrote. “The White House should do what anyone does when they make a mistake. Remove this and apologize.”
The broader video largely recycled Trump’s long debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen, claims rejected by courts, state officials, and Trump’s own former administration lawyers. But the final seconds, featuring the Obamas portrayed as primates while music from The Lion King played, became the focal point of the outrage.
The episode marks another moment in which Trump’s social media activity has triggered damage control from his own party, with Republican officials openly breaking ranks to condemn conduct they characterized as racist, offensive, and beneath the office of the presidency.
Notably absent by day’s end was a direct apology from Trump himself.
Instead, responsibility was shifted to unnamed staff, even as critics pointed out that the president has repeatedly used social media to amplify racist imagery, conspiracy theories, and personal attacks, often followed by denial or deflection once backlash becomes unavoidable.
For many lawmakers, Friday’s incident crossed a threshold.
This was not satire.
Not a misunderstanding.
Not fake outrage.
It was the President of the United States sharing racially dehumanizing imagery of his predecessor, and being forced by public pressure, including from his own allies, to take it down.
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