US President Donald Trump has come under fire after sharing a video on social media depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.
Former President Barack Obama speaks with then-President-elect Donald Trump as Melania Trump reads the eulogy before the state funeral for former President Jimmy Carter at the Washington National Cathedral on January 9, 2025 in Washington. (AP)A one-minute video posted on Trump’s Truth social account on Thursday repeated false claims that the ballot counting company Dominion Voting Systems helped rig the 2020 US presidential election against him.
Towards the end of the clip, the Obamas appear briefly with their faces pressed against the monkey’s body, accompanied by the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”.
As of Friday morning, the video had garnered more than 2,500 likes and been reposted 1,100 times, even as prominent Democrats sharply criticized the post.
Criticism from DemocratsCalifornia Governor Gavin Newsom, a vocal critic of Trump and a potential Democratic presidential contender in 2028, condemned the post, calling it “disgusting.”
“Disgusting behavior by the President. Every single Republican must condemn it. Now,” Newsom’s press office wrote on Account X.
Barack Obama’s former senior national security adviser Ben Rhodes also criticized Trump, saying history will remember him negatively.
“May it haunt Trump and his racist followers that in the future Americans will accept Obama as a beloved figure while studying it as a stain on our history,” he wrote in X.
