President Donald Trump faced massive bipartisan criticism after sharing and later removing a social media video that depicted former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as primates in a jungle setting, a move widely condemned as racist.
The video surfaced Thursday night on Trump’s Truth Social account but disappeared by Friday. The White House attributed the upload to a staff member, calling it a mistake, after civil rights groups and senior Republican lawmakers joined Democrats in denouncing the content. The removal stood out as an unusual acknowledgment of error from the administration and followed earlier remarks from press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who had brushed off criticism as exaggerated. Once calls for the post to be taken down intensified, including from within the Republican Party, the administration said it had been published in error and was swiftly removed.
The controversial clip appeared among numerous posts that night promoting Trump’s baseless narrative that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, even though courts across the United States and his own attorney general during his first administration found no credible evidence of widespread fraud capable of altering the result.
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Trump’s relationship with the Obamas has long been marked by personal attacks and rhetoric that critics say crosses into racism. Over the years, he promoted conspiracy theories questioning Barack Obama’s birthplace and made sweeping and derogatory remarks about nations with predominantly Black populations.
The timing of the post added to the controversy, landing during the opening week of Black History Month. It also came shortly after Trump issued a proclamation praising “the contributions of black Americans to our national greatness and their enduring commitment to the American principles of liberty, justice, and equality.”
An aide for Obama said the former president declined to comment on the incident, the AP reported.
Most of the 62-second video appeared to recycle a conservative production alleging election interference involving voting machines in key battleground states. Near the end of the clip, a brief segment showed two primates with the smiling faces of Barack and Michelle Obama superimposed.
The imagery reportedly originated from another video produced by a well-known conservative meme creator, which portrayed Trump as “King of the Jungle” and cast several Democratic figures as animals. The video also showed Joe Biden, who is white, as a jungle primate eating a banana.
“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 by text.
Disney’s 1994 feature film that Leavitt referenced is set on the savannah, not in the jungle, and it does not include great apes.
“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public,” Leavitt added.
By midday Friday, the video had been removed, with the White House placing blame on a subordinate.
The explanation sparked further scrutiny over oversight of Trump’s social media accounts. Those platforms have been used for major policy announcements, tariff declarations, threats of military action, and pointed attacks on political opponents. Trump often marks official policy posts with his signature or initials.
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Pastor Mark Burns, a high-profile Black supporter of Trump, wrote on X that he spoke “directly” with the president about the matter. He said he urged Trump to dismiss the staff member responsible and publicly condemn the video.
“He knows this is wrong, offensive, and unacceptable,” Burns posted.
Trump and White House accounts frequently share memes and AI-generated content. Administration officials, including Leavitt, have typically dismissed criticism by describing such posts as satire or humor.
Nevertheless, the video triggered swift condemnation across party lines and ideological groups, with many demanding an apology that had not been issued by early Friday afternoon.
The Rev. Bernice King, daughter of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., responded by invoking her father’s words: “Yes. I’m Black. I’m proud of it. I’m Black and beautiful.” She praised Black Americans as “diverse, innovative, industrious, inventive” and added, “We are beloved of God as postal workers and professors, as a former first lady and president. We are not apes.”
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the Senate’s only Black Republican, urged Trump to delete the post. “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” Scott, who chairs Senate Republicans’ midterm campaign arm, said on social media.
Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, whose state has the highest proportion of Black residents in the country, also criticized the video, calling it “totally unacceptable” and stating that Trump should apologize.
Several Republicans facing competitive reelection campaigns in November also expressed unease, creating a rare wave of public dissent within a party where many members have historically avoided clashing with Trump, often out of concern for political repercussions or losing his endorsement.
NAACP President Derrick Johnson linked the incident to broader political tensions, arguing that Trump was attempting to divert public attention from economic challenges and renewed interest in the Jeffrey Epstein case.
“Donald Trump’s video is blatantly racist, disgusting, and utterly despicable,” Johnson said in a statement. “You know who isn’t in the Epstein files? Barack Obama,” he continued. “You know who actually improved the economy as president? Barack Obama.”
The backlash also revived discussion about a longstanding pattern in American history in which influential white figures have associated Black people with animals, particularly apes, as part of racist ideology. Such portrayals date back to the 18th century, when cultural prejudice and pseudoscientific claims were used to link Africans with monkeys to justify slavery and later to portray freed Black people as threats to white society.
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote in his famous text “Notes on the State of Virginia” that Black women were the preferred sexual partners of orangutans. President Dwight Eisenhower, discussing the desegregation of public schools in the 1950s, once argued that white parents were concerned about their daughters being in classrooms with “big Black bucks.” Obama, as a candidate and president, was featured as a monkey or other primate on T-shirts and other merchandise.
During his 2024 campaign, Trump claimed immigrants were “poisoning the blood of our country,” a phrase critics have compared to rhetoric used by Adolf Hitler in Nazi Germany to dehumanize Jewish people.
While serving his first term, Trump described several developing countries with majority Black populations as “shithole countries.” He initially denied making the remark but acknowledged in December 2025 that he had used the phrase.
Trump also helped drive the false birther conspiracy against Obama, repeatedly alleging that the Hawaii-born president was secretly born in Kenya and therefore ineligible to hold office. Trump frequently demanded that Obama release birth documentation to prove he was a “natural-born citizen.”
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Obama later made his Hawaii birth records public. Trump eventually conceded during the 2016 presidential campaign, after securing the Republican nomination, that Obama was born in Hawaii. He then inaccurately claimed that his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, had originally started the conspiracy theory.
