The president of the United States, this Friday, unleashed fury and consternation—even among members of his own Republican party—by publishing a video on his social networks in which the former Democratic president and his wife Michelle appear represented as monkeys. He deleted it 12 hours later. The explanation from the White House, which during the morning had defended the images as the mere reproduction of a meme, was that an intern had uploaded the content by mistake.
The minute-long video was posted last midnight on Trump’s personal account on his social network, Truth, to which only a handful of aides have access. The recording is mostly made up of scenes in which the Republican’s false theory that there was massive fraud in the 2020 elections and that, in reality, he won them, is defended. In the last seconds you can see the images of the Obamas.
In these images, clearly generated by artificial intelligence, the faces of the first black president of the United States and the former first lady are superimposed on the bodies of two apes in a jungle. Behind them other primates can be distinguished.
A government official told Reuters on condition of anonymity that a White House staffer mistakenly posted the message. “It has already been eliminated,” he stated. Previously, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt had denied in a statement that the publication represented a racist insult and that it was a reference to the Disney film The lion kingwhich Trump had already used in another previous video to mock the Democrats. In those first images, the republican represents himself as the sovereign lion of all animals. Democrats appear as other characters in the film.
“This is from an internet meme that represents President Trump as the king of the jungle and the Democrats as characters from The lion king. Please stop acting scandalized and report today on something that truly matters to the American public,” Leavitt had defended.
The Republican has always been contemptuous of Obama. Trump made his debut on the political scene by falsely accusing him of not having been born on United States soil but in Kenya, where his father came from, and therefore not being a legitimate president, since the Constitution only allows citizens who were born on American soil to aspire to the White House.
The press office of the governor of California, Democrat Gavin Newsom — who is emerging as one of them — has spread a call on the social network X to Republicans to publicly condemn the video. “Disgusting behavior by the president,” the office notes. “Every Republican must condemn this now.”
Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it.
— Tim Scott (@votetimscott)
“Let it be clear to Trump and his racist followers that Americans of the future will remember the Obamas as beloved figures, while they will study him as a stain on our history,” Ben Rhodes, Obama’s former National Security Advisor, wrote on the same social network. The Republicans Against Trump account laments that the president is “falling lower and lower.”
Republican Senator Tim Scott, a black man and Trump’s former rival in the primaries before withdrawing from the presidential race to support him, has in turn written that he was praying that the publication would turn out to be false. “It is the most racist thing I have seen come out of this White House. The president should eliminate it,” he criticized.
