White House Says Outrage Is Fake After Donald Trump Posts Racist Video Of Obamas As Apes

The White House defended Donald Trump‘s racist Truth Social post Thursday night. The post showed Barack Obama and Michelle Obama as apes.

Donald Trump shared a two-second clip at 11:44 P.M. The video came from an AI-generated meme account. It showed the former president and first lady as primates.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the backlash “fake outrage” on Friday morning. She said the clip was part of a larger video showing Trump as a lion.

“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. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

The original video was created by a meme account @xerias_x in October 2025. It featured various Democrats as animals set to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

But Donald Trump only shared the snippet showing the Obamas.

Leavitt refused to say if Trump would remove the post or apologize. The racist clip remained on Truth Social Friday morning.

Even Trump’s Black buddy Senator Tim Scott called it “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.” The South Carolina Republican said Trump should delete the post.

Democrats blasted the post across social media. Rep. Herb Conaway called it “disgusting behavior” by the president. The imagery uses centuries-old racist tropes against Black Americans. These depictions were used to justify slavery and Jim Crow laws.

To make it worse, Donald Trump posted the clip during the first week of Black History Month, and it’s not a coincidence either. He has a long history of racist attacks on the Obama family.

The president led the “birther” conspiracy movement against Obama. He falsely claimed Obama was born in Kenya and had a forged birth certificate.

Trump has made other racist comments as president. He said immigrants were “poisoning the blood” of America. He called Somali immigrants “garbage.”

The racist post drew widespread condemnation from civil rights groups. Many called it the most openly racist act by a sitting president in decades.

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