White House removes Trump post with racist footage of Obamas hours after defending it

Editor's note: This story contains offensive imagery.

Washington — The White House on Friday removed an election-conspiracy video shared by President Trump on social media that included racist footage depicting former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes.

A White House official said a staffer "erroneously made the post," which has been taken down.

The move came after Mr. Trump faced backlash from Democrats and Republicans alike for posting the video, which was called "racist," "offensive" and "unacceptable." White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had said earlier Friday that the footage was part of an "internet meme video" that depicted the president as "King of the Jungle" and Democrats as characters from the Lion King.

"Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public," Leavitt had said in her earlier statement, in response to questions about the post.

The video, which is just over a minute long, promoted false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against Mr. Trump. Toward the end of the video was a roughly two-second clip that shows the Obamas' heads edited onto the bodies of primates, with the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" playing.

Mr. Trump shared the video to his Truth Social account at 11:44 p.m. Thursday. A link to the video now shows the page as "not found."

Obama was the nation's first Black president and Michelle Obama was the first Black first lady. Mr. Trump has a history of sharing disparaging and racist memes about the Obamas. The president also amplified for years a conspiracy theory that Obama was born in Kenya and therefore ineligible to serve as president. Amid pressure to disavow the so-called "birther" claim, Mr. Trump finally said during the 2016 presidential campaign that "President Obama was born in the United States. Period."

There has been no reaction from the Obamas, and for now they are not commenting, a spokeswoman said. 

The original video that Leavitt referenced was shared on X last October by the user @xerias_x, who declared, "President Trump: King of the Jungle." The 55-second-long video appears to be generated by AI and opens with Obama and Michelle Obama's heads superimposed onto apes' bodies.

The original video depicts numerous other Democrats as animals, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a warthog, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as a donkey and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer as a zebra. Former President Joe Biden also appears as a primate, and former Vice President Kamala Harris is pictured as a turtle. 

Mr. Trump is portrayed in the video as a lion.

The Obamas are the only Democrats in the clip that was shared by the president on Truth Social on Thursday. 

Lawmakers denounce Trump's post

The footage shared by Mr. Trump was swiftly condemned by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Numerous Republicans urged the president to remove the video featuring the Obamas and apologize.

"Praying it was fake because it's the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House," Sen. Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican, said in a social media post. "The President should remove it."

Scott is the longest-serving Black senator in U.S. history and chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Republican Rep. Mike Lawler of New York echoed Scott's call for Mr. Trump to delete the Truth Social post.

"The President's post is wrong and incredibly offensive — whether intentional or a mistake — and should be deleted immediately with an apology offered," Lawler said in a post on X.

GOP Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi said the video was "totally unacceptable," and fellow Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska wrote that a "reasonable person sees the racist context" to the depictions.

"The White House should do what anyone does when they make a mistake: remove this and apologize," Ricketts said on X.

Sen. John Curtis, a Utah Republican, said, "The post was blatantly racist and inexcusable. It should never have been posted or left published for so long."

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said Republicans should denounce what he called the president's "disgusting bigotry."

"President Obama and Michelle Obama are brilliant, compassionate and patriotic Americans. They represent the best of this country. Donald Trump is a vile, unhinged and malignant bottom feeder," Jeffries wrote on X. "Why are GOP leaders like John Thune continuing to stand by this sick individual?"

Gov. Gavin Newsom, a California Democrat who frequently spars with the president, denounced the video shared by Mr. Trump late Thursday.

"Disgusting behavior by the President. Every single Republican must denounce this. Now," his press office wrote on social media.

Trump's claims about the 2020 presidential election

The president has continued to claim, despite extensive evidence to the contrary, that the 2020 presidential election was rife with fraud and that he, not Biden, was the winner. But dozens of lawsuits filed by his campaign and Republican allies seeking to overturn the results in key battleground states were dismissed by federal judges. Bill Barr, who served as attorney general during Mr. Trump's first term, said the Justice Department did not uncover evidence of widespread fraud that would've changed the outcome of the 2020 election.

The video shared by Mr. Trump makes unfounded allegations about voting machines from Dominion Voting Systems, a voting technology company. The claims were raised by some of the president's allies in the wake of the 2020 election and led to defamation lawsuits by the company.

Dominion argued in suits against Fox News and Newsmax that the networks defamed it by broadcasting unfounded allegations that Dominion had rigged the election against Mr. Trump and its software manipulated vote counts. The voting company also sued Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor, for repeatedly peddling false claims about the 2020 election in interviews.

Fox News agreed in 2023 to pay Dominion $787.5 million as part of a settlement to resolve the defamation case and Newsmax agreed to pay the voting company $67 million last August. Giuliani and Dominion reached a settlement last September, though the terms are confidential.

Former special counsel Jack Smith told House investigators in December that Giuliani "disavowed a number of the claims" he made publicly about the integrity of the 2020 election in an interview with his team. Smith oversaw the prosecution of Mr. Trump related to his alleged effort to subvert the transfer of power after the 2020 election. The president had denied wrongdoing and the case was dropped after he won a second term in November 2024.