WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump triggered outrage on Friday after he posted a video depicting Barack Obama, the first Black president in American history, and his wife Michelle as monkeys.
A top Democrat called Trump “vile” while even a senior Republican senator said the video posted the president’s own Truth Social account was blatantly racist.
But the White House was unrepentant over Trump’s post, rejecting what it called “fake outrage” and saying the video was from an “internet meme.”
Near the end of the one-minute-long video promoting conspiracies about Republican Trump’s 2020 election loss, the Obamas are shown with their faces on the bodies of monkeys for about one second.
The song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” plays in the background when the Obamas appear.
The video repeats false allegations that ballot-counting company Dominion Voting Systems helped steal the 2020 election from Trump and hand victory to Joe Biden, who was Obama’s vice president at the time.
As of early Friday, the video had been liked several thousand times on the president’s social media platform.
“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to AFP.
“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public,” added Leavitt.
There was no immediate reaction from the Obamas.
But the top Democrat in the House of Representatives, Hakeem Jeffries, called Trump “vile, unhinged and malignant” and a “sick individual.”
“Every single Republican must immediately denounce Donald Trump’s disgusting bigotry,” Jeffries posted on X.
During negotiations to avoid a US government shutdown last year Trump posted a video of Jeffries, who is Black, wearing a fake mustache and a sombrero. Jeffries called the image racist.
There was one unusually strong expression of outrage from Trump’s own party.
Tim Scott, the only Black Republican senator and a contender for the 2024 presidential nomination, called the video “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”
Scott said he was “praying it was fake” and called for Trump to remove it.
