Overview
- The minute-long Truth Social post stayed up for about 12 hours and ended with an apparently AI-generated clip depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes set to The Lion Sleeps Tonight.
- White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt first defended the upload as a meme before officials removed it and said a staffer had erroneously posted it, prompting questions about account controls.
- Trump told reporters he viewed only the beginning of the clip focused on false 2020 election-fraud claims, said he condemned the offensive imagery, and insisted he made no mistake.
- Republicans including Sen. Tim Scott, Sen. Roger Wicker, Sen. Pete Ricketts, Rep. Mike Lawler, and Sen. Susan Collins publicly called the post unacceptable and urged removal and an apology.
- Reporters traced the ape segment to a pro-Trump meme circulated on X by the creator known as Xerias, and civil-rights groups such as the NAACP denounced the video as blatantly racist during Black History Month.