WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump removed a video from his social media account that showed Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys after criticism from members of both parties in Congress.
Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina called the post “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House” and said the President should remove it. “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” Scott wrote on X on Friday morning before the post was deleted.
The video, about a minute long, included conspiracy theories about 2020 election voting machines and a brief clip of the Obamas dancing in monkey form to the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” a 1961 hit featured in Disney’s The Lion King. Depicting Black people as monkeys is a centuries-old racist trope.
The post drew backlash from Democrats, but Scott’s criticism was especially notable. He is a longtime ally of Trump, once considered as a potential vice presidential candidate, and the only Black Republican in the Senate. Senators Roger Wicker of Mississippi and Pete Ricketts of Nebraska also called for the post to be removed. “Even if this was a Lion King meme, a reasonable person sees the racist context to this,” Ricketts wrote on X.
Representative Mike Lawler of New York added, “The President’s post is wrong and incredibly offensive whether intentional or a mistake and should be deleted immediately with an apology offered.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the video came from a longer clip showing Trump as the Lion King and top Democrats as jungle characters. Among them, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, and Senator Adam Schiff were depicted as an elephant, boar, meerkat, and giraffe respectively. “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 said. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
Following the backlash, the post was deleted. A White House official confirmed that an unidentified staffer had posted the video.
Trump told reporters on Air Force One that he had sent the video to a staffer to review. “I looked at the first part, and it was really about voter fraud. Then I gave it to the people to generally look at the whole thing, but I guess somebody didn’t and they posted it. And we took it down.”
Trump said he spoke to Scott but does not feel the need to apologize. “I didn’t make a mistake,” he said. “I just looked at the first part. I didn’t see the whole thing. I guess during the end of it, there was some kind of a picture that people don’t like. I wouldn’t like it either.”
The Obama Foundation has not commented on the video.
The clip appears to have been taken from a post shared in October by conservative meme creator Xerias. It also showed other high-profile Democrats, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and Hillary Clinton as animals. Former President Joe Biden was depicted as an ape eating a banana.
Trump has faced previous controversies on social media. Last September, he posted a vulgar AI-generated deepfake video of Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Initially defended as a meme, the post was removed after bipartisan backlash.
Trump said he approved the post because he liked its message on voter fraud, but he acknowledged that “probably they would have had the sense to take it down” if his staff had seen the whole video. “We took it down as soon as we found out about it,” he added.
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