“There’s no bottom:” Donald Trump removes racist video of Obamas
President Donald Trump has removed his social media post with a video clip depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes after facing backlash.
The clip shows the former president and first lady’s heads superimposed onto the bodies of dancing apes and is set to the melody of The Tokens’ song The Lion Sleeps Tonight.
It flashes briefly at the very end of a 62-second election-conspiracy video shared by Trump on his Truth Social plat. It is unclear whether the president has watched the entire video before posting it on social media.
The post had close to 3,000 likes at the time of publishing and had been reshared over 1,000 times before it was removed. It has drawn sharp criticism from a number of public figures, including California Governor Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate.
“Disgusting behavior from the president. Every single Republican must denounce it. Now,” said a post by Newsom’s office on X, a social media platform.
Republicans against Trump condemned the president for posting the racist imagery, saying “there’s no bottom.” Republican Senator Tim Scott, who is black, said the post was "the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House" and called the president to remove it.
Harry Sisson, a liberal political influencer, said the clip was “incredibly racist and disgusting,” as well as “beneath the office of the presidency, like everything he does.”
Initially, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt rejected accusations of racism as "fake outrage" and defended the clip as "internet meme video."
The clip depicting Obamas as apes appears to be taken out from a longer AI-generated video originally posted on X by MAGA meme account Xerias. It mocks Democratic leaders and depicts Trump as a lion, with a caption dubbing him a “king of the jungle.” The video, which was age-restricted, had over 1 million views at the time of publication.
Trump resorted to AI slop to attack his opponents and critics in the past as well, including a fake Obama arrest video and deepfakes of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
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