{"id":284706,"date":"2026-02-06T23:17:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T23:17:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/284706\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T23:17:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T23:17:07","slug":"trump-shares-video-depicting-obamas-as-apes-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/284706\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump shares video depicting Obamas as apes \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

US president Donald Trump<\/a> shared a video on social media depicting Democratic former president Barack Obama<\/a> and first lady \u200dMichelle Obama<\/a> as apes, invoking racist imagery long used to dehumanise people of African descent.<\/p>\n

Late on Thursday, Trump shared a minute-long \u200dvideo amplifying the Republican US president\u2019s false claims that his 2020 election defeat was the result of fraud. Spliced into the video was an apparently AI-generated<\/a> clip of dancing primates superimposed with the Obamas\u2019 heads.<\/p>\n

It was deleted about 12 hours after it was posted.<\/p>\n

The post drew swift criticism from \u200cprominent political figures, including Republican senator Tim Scott, a Trump ally who is black.<\/p>\n

\u201cPraying it was fake because it\u2019s the \u2060most racist thing I\u2019ve seen out of this White House,\u201d Scott said on X. \u201cThe President should \u200cremove \u200bit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republican \u200drepresentative Mike Lawler of New York said Trump should apologise and delete the post.<\/p>\n

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said the post had generated \u201cfake outrage\u201d, adding, \u201cThis is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King \u2060of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King.\u201d Trump\u2019s clip included a song from that \u2060musical.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the Obamas declined \u2060to comment.<\/p>\n

White supremacists have for centuries depicted people of African ancestry as monkeys as part of campaigns to dehumanise and dominate black populations.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0Donald Trump\u2019s hunger for monuments is reshaping WashingtonOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

\u201cLet it haunt Trump \u200dand his racist followers that future Americans will embrace the Obamas as beloved figures while studying him as a stain on our history,\u201d said Ben Rhodes, a former Obama aide, on X.<\/p>\n

Trump has a history of sharing racist rhetoric and long promoted the false conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. In December, Trump described Somalis as \u201cgarbage\u201d<\/a> who should be thrown out of the country. He has referred \u200cto Somalia and other \u200cdeveloping nations as \u201cshithole countries\u201d. He was also criticised last year for depicting House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is black, with a superimposed handlebar moustache and a sombrero.<\/p>\n

Civil rights \u200cadvocates have said Trump\u2019s rhetoric has become increasingly bold, normalised and politically permissible.<\/p>\n

\u201cDonald Trump\u2019s video is blatantly racist, disgusting, \u2060and utterly despicable,\u201d said Derrick Johnson, national president of the NAACP, a civil rights group, in an emailed statement. \u201cVoters are watching and will remember this at the ballot box.\u201d \u2013 Reuters <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US president Donald Trump shared a video on social media depicting Democratic former president Barack Obama and first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[218,5456,969,42,28658,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-284706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-artificial-intelligence","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-donald-trump","11":"tag-headlines","12":"tag-michelle-obama","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-top-news","15":"tag-top-stories","16":"tag-topnews","17":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284706","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=284706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}