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A controversial video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes was shared from US President Donald Trump’s social media account, sparking outrage and leading to its removal after condemnation, including criticism from within the Republican Party.
Initially, the White House defended the post but reversed its stance and deleted it approximately 12 hours after it went live.
“A White House staff member mistakenly posted the video,” stated an official from the White House.
“The post has since been removed,” the official added.
An adviser to President Trump mentioned that he was unaware of the video’s existence before it was shared late Thursday. Upon discovering it, he ordered its immediate removal.
Both officials declined to be named. The White House did not respond to a question about the staffer’s identity.
White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt hours earlier had defended the post, describing the wave of negative reactions as “fake outrage”.
The minute-long video shared on Trump’s Truth Social network amplified false claims that his 2020 election defeat was the result of fraud.
Spliced into the video near its end was a brief, and apparently AI-generated, clip of dancing primates superimposed with the Obamas’ heads.
Trump has a history of sharing racist rhetoric and long promoted the false conspiracy theory that Obama, the president from 2009 to 2017, was not born in the United States.
Speaking at a prayer breakfast on Thursday, Trump said Obama “was very bad” and a “terrible divider of our country”.
Rare rebuke from Republicans
The post drew bipartisan criticism, including from Republican senator Tim Scott, a close Trump ally who is Black.
“Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” Scott said on X.
“The President should remove it.”
Other Republican politicians called on Trump to apologise and delete the post. Some Republicans also privately reached out to the White House about the video, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Prior to the post being deleted, Leavitt said it was “from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King”. Trump’s clip included a song from the Disney musical.
A spokesperson for the Obamas declined to comment.
White supremacists have for centuries depicted people of African ancestry as monkeys as part of campaigns to dehumanise Black populations.
“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,” said Ben Rhodes, a former Obama aide, on X.
Civil rights advocates have said Trump’s rhetoric has become increasingly bold, normalised, and politically permissible.
“Donald Trump’s video is blatantly racist, disgusting, and utterly despicable,” Derrick Johnson, national president of the NAACP, a civil rights group, said in an statement.
“Voters are watching and will remember this at the ballot box.”
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