On Thursday night (February 5), President Donald Trump went on another posting spree on his Truth Social media platform, which included a blatantly racist video of former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.
The video was created by a Trump supporter who goes by the name Xerias, who claimed credit for using AI to make the video early Friday morning (February 6) to their followers in a post on X, formerly Twitter. The minute-long video, which supports Trump’s false claims of the 2020 presidential election being rigged, shows an image of Barack and Michelle Obama’s heads on the bodies of apes dancing in the jungle as the 1961 song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by The Tokens plays in the background.
There was immediate fury over Trump reposting the video, which demonizes the first Black president of the United States using the centuries-old racist trope of depicting Black public figures as primates. As outrageous as his sharing of the video was, the defense offered by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt in a statement Friday morning definitely matched it.
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“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 in the statement. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
Those outraged by Trump’s posting of the video included one of his avid supporters, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. The longtime Republican, who is Black, wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter: “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it.”
Trump has a documented history of being bigoted towards former President Obama. He was a driving force behind the “birther” movement, which sprung up during Obama’s second term in office. He falsely claimed that Obama wasn’t born in the United States and had a forged birth certificate which should’ve prevented him from being president. Michelle Obama has also been a target of racist conspiracy theories on social media as well.
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