{"id":458919,"date":"2026-02-07T03:23:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T03:23:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/458919\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T03:23:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T03:23:07","slug":"republicans-condemn-racist-trump-video-post-depicting-obamas-as-apes-donald-trump-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/458919\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans condemn racist Trump video post depicting Obamas as apes | Donald Trump News"},"content":{"rendered":"

United States President Donald Trump has again stoked outrage over his online posts, this time for sharing a video depicting<\/a> former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as apes.<\/p>\n

The reposted clip came as part of a flurry of late-night messages on Trump\u2019s Truth Social account.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

By midday on Friday, the video had been removed \u2014 but not after an outpouring of bipartisan condemnation, slamming the post as blatantly racist.<\/p>\n

In a post<\/a> on the social media platform X, Tim Scott, the only Black Republican currently serving in the Senate, said he was \u201cpraying\u201d that the video \u201cwas fake because it\u2019s the most racist thing I\u2019ve seen out of this White House\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president should remove it,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Another Republican, Representative Mike Lawler, also called on Trump to delete the post, calling it \u201cincredibly offensive \u2014 whether intentional or a mistake\u201d.<\/p>\n

Democrats, meanwhile, sought to tie the video to Trump\u2019s history of insensitive remarks, and they called on Republicans to condemn this latest episode.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Obama and Michelle Obama are brilliant, compassionate and patriotic Americans. They represent the best of this country,\u201d said Hakeem Jeffries, the top Democrat in the US House of Representatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cDonald Trump is a vile, unhinged and malignant bottom feeder. Why are GOP leaders like John Thune continuing to stand by this sick individual?\u201d<\/p>\n

The White House, for its part, initially defended the post as an \u201cinternet meme\u201d. Later, it said the post had been shared \u201cerroneously\u201d by a White House staffer, not by the president.<\/p>\n

Trump himself denied responsibility as he met with a gaggle of reporters on Air Force One, saying he only watched the start of the short video clip, which included false claims about his 2020 election defeat.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I didn\u2019t make a mistake,\u201d Trump said, refusing calls to apologize. \u201cI look at thousands of things. I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stoking outrage<\/p>\n

Trump has long had an adversarial relationship with the Obamas, who became the first Black couple in US history to serve as president and first lady.<\/p>\n

One of Trump\u2019s first forays into national politics came during Barack Obama\u2019s 2012 re-election campaign, when he pushed false claims<\/a> that the Democratic leader had not been born in the US.<\/p>\n

Trump, a Republican, is known to be a prolific social media user, and he co-founded Truth Social in February 2022 after being temporarily banned from other major social media sites.<\/p>\n

There,\u00a0he often reposts memes and videos generated through artificial intelligence that promote his public image and political platform.<\/p>\n

The video that includes the Obamas was posted online at 11:44pm Eastern US time (04:44 GMT) as part of a series of clips Trump shared.<\/p>\n

The image of the Obamas as apes arrives about 59 seconds into a video that only lasts one minute and two seconds.<\/p>\n

It appears dropped into a documentary-style segment that pushes baseless claims about the 2020 presidential election, claiming it was marred by malfeasance and problems with electronic voting machines. Trump has repeatedly spread lies denying his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in that race.<\/p>\n

The video, which bears the watermark of a site called Patriot News Outlet, pairs the doctored image of the Obamas with the 1961 song The Lion Sleeps Tonight.<\/p>\n

Critics have regularly accused Trump of intentionally stoking outrage to distract from politically damaging domestic issues, including the recent release<\/a> of millions of files related to disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump\u2019s name has featured in those files.<\/p>\n

Midterms ahead<\/p>\n

Some Republicans, like Lawler in New York, also face punishing re-election campaigns ahead as the country nears its November midterm elections.<\/p>\n

Trump has warned that, if Republicans lose control of Congress, he could face new impeachment proceedings.<\/p>\n

Initially, in the hours after the video was reposted on Trump\u2019s Truth Social account, the White House dismissed the backlash as overblown.<\/p>\n

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told several US news outlets that the image of the Obamas was excerpted from an \u201cinternet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from \u2018The Lion King’\u201d, a 1994 animated feature film.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public,\u201d she said in a statement to ABC News.<\/p>\n

After the post was deleted, Leavitt continued to brush aside the outcry as well as demands for Trump to apologise.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Fox News, she added that Trump had already addressed the incident with some members of Congress.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe spoke with lawmakers today out of respect for them, including Senator Tim Scott. The post was removed. But leave it to the leftist media, of course, to talk about this all day,\u201d she told Fox News host Laura Ingraham.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe did take down the post, and again, this is merely a distraction for the fake news media,\u201d Leavitt continued, quickly pivoting to Trump\u2019s accomplishments.<\/p>\n

But Leavitt\u2019s explanations did not dampen the bipartisan push for Trump to renounce the video.<\/p>\n

Republican Senator Pete Ricketts of Nebraska was also among those calling for the post to be taken down.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if this was a Lion King meme, a reasonable person sees the racist context to this,\u201d Ricketts wrote<\/a> on X.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe White House should do what anyone does when they make a mistake: remove this and apologise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democrats, meanwhile, questioned Trump\u2019s fitness for the presidency. In a social media post<\/a>, Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi drew a line between the video and the long history of racist depictions of Black people in the US.<\/p>\n

He pointed to similarly dehumanising illustrations that were shared during the Jim Crow era, a period from 1865 to the mid-20th century when Black people faced\u00a0segregation and unequal rights following the abolishment of slavery.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis kind of Jim Crow-style dehumanisation is pathetic and a disgrace to the office,\u201d Krishnamoorthi wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"United States President Donald Trump has again stoked outrage over his online posts, this time for sharing a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":458920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1376,893,43,44,714,11807,5522,41,39,42,40,772,1690],"class_list":["post-458919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-donald-trump","tag-government","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-race-issues","tag-racism","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=458919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/458919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/458920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=458919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=458919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=458919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}