{"id":284476,"date":"2026-02-06T20:17:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T20:17:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/284476\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T20:17:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T20:17:09","slug":"white-house-removes-video-shared-by-trump-showing-obamas-as-apes-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/284476\/","title":{"rendered":"White House removes video shared by Trump showing Obamas as apes | US News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donald Trump has been accused of “disgusting behaviour” after sharing a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.<\/p>\n

The depiction appears towards the end of the video shared by the president, asserting debunked claims that the 2020 election – which he lost to Joe Biden<\/a> – was stolen from him.<\/p>\n

Posted on Mr Trump’s<\/a> own social media network, Truth Social, the two-second clip shows the Obamas as apes bobbing up and down to the tune of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”.<\/p>\n

The post was later deleted – around 12 hours after being posted.<\/p>\n

A White House official said a member of staff “erroneously made the post” and it has now been taken down.<\/p>\n

In a message on X, formerly Twitter, Gavin Newsom<\/a>, the Democratic governor of California, accused the president of “disgusting behaviour” over the post.<\/p>\n

He added: “Every single Republican must denounce this. Now.”<\/p>\n

Ben Rhodes, who served as deputy national security adviser in the Obama<\/a> White House, reacted to the video by calling Trump “a stain on our history”.<\/p>\n

“Let it haunt Trump and his racist followers that future Americans will embrace the Obamas as beloved figures while studying him as a stain on our history,” he wrote on X.<\/p>\n

George Conway – ex-husband of Kellyanne Conway, who managed the president’s successful election campaign in 2016 – responded by highlighting an article he’d written describing Trump as a “racist” in 2019.<\/p>\n

The group Republicans Against Trump wrote: “There’s no bottom.”<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Share<\/p>\n

\n Is Trump administration ‘normalising misogyny’?\n <\/p>\n

Before the post was removed, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended it and said the depiction formed part of a longer video depicting various politicians as animals.<\/p>\n

She said: “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats<\/a> as characters from The Lion King.<\/p>\n

“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”<\/p>\n

Mr Trump has a long history of attacking Mr Obama, his predecessor as president, and was a vocal proponent of the “birther” conspiracy theory.<\/p>\n

The theory cast doubt on Mr Obama’s birth in Hawaii, asserting that he was actually born in Kenya, and therefore ineligible to hold the office of president.<\/p>\n

Mr Obama produced his long-form birth certificate in 2011. In 2016 Mr Trump publicly accepted that his predecessor was born in the USA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump has been accused of “disgusting behaviour” after sharing a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284477,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-284476","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284476\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}