WASHINGTON, United States, Feb 6, 2026 (BSS/AFP) - US President Donald 
Trump triggered outrage Friday after he posted a video depicting Barack 
Obama, the first Black president in American history, and his wife Michelle 
as monkeys.

A top Democrat called Trump "vile" while even a senior Republican senator 
said the video posted the president's own Truth Social account was blatantly 
racist.

But the White House was unrepentant over Trump's post, rejecting what it 
called "fake outrage" and saying the video was from an "internet meme."

Near the end of the one-minute-long video promoting conspiracies about 
Republican Trump's 2020 election loss, the Obamas are shown with their faces 
on the bodies of monkeys for about one second.

The song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" plays in the background when the Obamas 
appear.

The video repeats false allegations that ballot-counting company Dominion 
Voting Systems helped steal the 2020 election from Trump and hand victory to 
Joe Biden, who was Obama's vice president at the time.

As of early Friday, the video had been liked several thousand times on the 
president's social media platform.

"This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of 
the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King," White House Press 
Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to AFP.

"Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually 
matters to the American public," added Leavitt.

There was no immediate reaction from the Obamas.

But the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, called 
Trump "vile, unhinged and malignant" and a "sick individual."

"Every single Republican must immediately denounce Donald Trump's disgusting 
bigotry," Jeffries posted on X.

During negotiations to avoid a US government shutdown last year Trump posted 
a video of Jeffries, who is Black, wearing a fake mustache and a sombrero. 
Jeffries called the image racist.

There was one unusually strong expression of outrage from Trump's own party.

Tim Scott, the only Black Republican senator and a contender for the 2024 
presidential nomination, called the video "the most racist thing I've seen 
out of this White House."

Scott said he was "praying it was fake" and called for Trump to remove it.

- 'Stain on our history' -

Obama is the only Black president in American history and backed Trump's 
opponent Kamala Harris on the campaign trail in the 2024 presidential 
election.

Billionaire Trump launched his own political career by pushing the racist and 
false "birther" conspiracy theory that his Democratic predecessor was lying 
about being born in the United States.

The office of California Governor Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 Democratic 
presidential candidate and a prominent Trump critic, slammed "disgusting 
behavior."

Ben Rhodes, a former top national security advisor and close confidant to 
Barack Obama, also condemned the imagery.

"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," he wrote on X.

Trump has long had a bitter rivalry with Obama, who was president from 2009 
to 2017, taking particular umbrage at the Democrat's popularity and the fact 
that he won the Nobel peace prize.

In the first year of his second term in the White House, Trump has ramped up 
his use of hyper-realistic but fabricated AI visuals on Truth Social and 
other platforms, often glorifying himself while lampooning his critics.

He has used the provocative posts to rally his conservative base.

An AI-generate video in one of the posts, showing fighter jets dumping human 
waste on protesters, was created by the same X user who made the video 
showing the Obamas as monkeys.

Last year, Trump posted a video generated by artificial intelligence showing 
Barack Obama being arrested in the Oval Office and appearing behind bars in 
an orange jumpsuit.

Since returning to the White House, Trump has drawn criticism from his 
opponents for leading a crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) 
programs.

US federal anti-discrimination programs were born of the 1960s civil rights 
struggle, mainly led by Black Americans, for equality and justice after 
hundreds of years of slavery, whose abolition in 1865 saw other institutional 
forms of racism enforced.