Former President Donald Trump sparked outrage across the US political spectrum after sharing a video on his Truth Social account that depicted former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as monkeys.
The White House initially dismissed the backlash as “fake outrage” but later blamed the post on a staff error.
Democratic leaders condemned Trump’s actions as “vile,” while a senior Republican senator described the clip as blatantly racist.
The one-minute video, which promoted a conspiracy theory blaming Trump’s 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, showed images of Barack and Michelle Obama superimposed on monkey bodies for about a second near the end.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt initially downplayed the incident, calling the footage a meme video portraying Trump as a “king of the jungle” and Democrats as characters from The Lion King. “Please stop the fake outrage and report something that actually matters to the American people,” she said in a statement to AFP.
However, nearly 12 hours after the post appeared, the administration, which rarely admits mistakes, confirmed that a White House staffer had mistakenly shared the video, and it has since been deleted.
As of now, neither Barack nor Michelle Obama have commented on the controversy.
