Trump Faces Fury for Sharing Edited Video Targeting Obama

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump triggered outrage on Friday after posting a video depicting former president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as monkeys.

A top Democrat termed Trump “vile,” while even a senior Republican senator said the video shared on the president’s Truth Social account was blatantly racist.

The White House, however, dismissed criticism, rejecting what it called “fake outrage” and saying the clip was part of an “internet meme.”

Near the end of the one-minute-long video promoting conspiracies about Trump’s 2020 election loss, the Obamas appear briefly with their faces edited onto the bodies of monkeys. The song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” plays in the background during the scene.

The video repeats false claims that Dominion Voting Systems helped steal the 2020 election from Trump and hand victory to Joe Biden.

As of early Friday, the post had received several thousand likes on Truth Social.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the clip was “an internet meme video depicting Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” urging critics to “stop the fake outrage.”

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There was no immediate reaction from the Obama.

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries condemned the post, calling Trump “vile, unhinged and malignant,” and urged Republicans to denounce what he described as “disgusting bigotry.”

Jeffries also recalled a previous instance in which Trump shared an edited image of him wearing a fake moustache and sombrero, which he said was racist.

Senator Tim Scott, the only Black Republican senator, issued an unusually strong rebuke, calling the video “the most racist thing” he had seen from the White House. He said he was praying it was fake and urged Trump to remove it.