Overview
- The roughly one-minute video concluded with a one-second shot of Barack and Michelle Obama’s faces superimposed on monkeys to the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight.
- The post remained online for about 12 hours before deletion, after the White House first called criticism “false indignation” and then attributed the upload to a staff mistake.
- Trump told reporters he did not watch the full clip before it was posted and said, “I did not make a mistake,” declining to apologize.
- Republicans including Sen. Tim Scott and Rep. Mike Lawler joined Democratic leaders in denouncing the video as racist and urging its removal.
- The clip echoed debunked claims about Dominion Voting Systems and fits a broader pattern of the president sharing AI-generated or manipulated content targeting political opponents.