President Donald Trump has come under intense criticism after sharing and later deleting a controversial social media video that featured racist imagery involving former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama.
The incident, which unfolded late Thursday, has sparked rare bipartisan outrage and renewed debate over Trump’s online conduct, especially during Black History Month.
The now-deleted post included a roughly one-minute video that largely promoted false claims of fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
However, near the end, the video abruptly shifted to disturbing visuals. The faces of Barack and Michelle Obama were edited onto cartoon apes, accompanied by the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by The Tokens.
Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Friday night, Trump said he had only watched part of the video before it was shared. “I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine,” he said. “I looked in the first part and it was really about voter fraud…and the machines, how crooked it is, how disgusting it is.” He added that responsibility for reviewing the entire video rested with staff. “Then I gave it to the people. Generally, they’d look at the whole thing.”
Trump confirmed the video was taken down once the offensive content was discovered. “We took it down as soon as we found out about it,” he said.
However, despite condemning the racist imagery, Trump refused to apologize. When asked if he made a mistake, he replied, “No, I didn’t make a mistake.”
A White House official told NBC News that the post was shared in error by a staff member and was removed shortly before noon on Friday.
Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt initially defended the post, calling it “an internet meme depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from ‘The Lion King.’” She urged critics to “stop the fake outrage.”
However, backlash intensified rapidly. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, the Senate’s only Black Republican, described the post as “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”
Trump later said he spoke with Scott, calling him “great” and insisting “Tim understood that 100%.”
Other Republicans were less forgiving. Senator Pete Ricketts stated, “Even if this was a ‘Lion King’ meme, a reasonable person sees the racist context to this.”
Representative Mike Lawler added that the video was “wrong and incredibly offensive whether intentional or a mistake.”
Moreover, Representative Brian Fitzpatrick called the post “a grave failure of judgment,” while Senator John Curtis criticized the delay in removing it, saying it was “blatantly racist and inexcusable.”
The Trump racist video controversy is the latest in a series of incidents involving manipulated or AI-generated political content shared by the former president.
