Donald Trump has been accused of “disgusting behaviour” after sharing a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.
The depiction appears towards the end of the video shared by the president, asserting debunked claims that the 2020 election – which he lost to Joe Biden – was stolen from him.
Posted on Mr Trump’s own social media network, Truth Social, the two-second clip shows the Obamas as apes bobbing up and down to the tune of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”.
The post was later deleted – around 12 hours after being posted.
A White House official said a member of staff “erroneously made the post” and it has now been taken down.
In a message on X, formerly Twitter, Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, accused the president of “disgusting behaviour” over the post.
He added: “Every single Republican must denounce this. Now.”
Ben Rhodes, who served as deputy national security adviser in the Obama White House, reacted to the video by calling Trump “a stain on our history”.
“Let it haunt Trump and his racist followers that future Americans will embrace the Obamas as beloved figures while studying him as a stain on our history,” he wrote on X.
George Conway – ex-husband of Kellyanne Conway, who managed the president’s successful election campaign in 2016 – responded by highlighting an article he’d written describing Trump as a “racist” in 2019.
The group Republicans Against Trump wrote: “There’s no bottom.”
Before the post was removed, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended it and said the depiction formed part of a longer video depicting various politicians as animals.
She said: “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King.
“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
Mr Trump has a long history of attacking Mr Obama, his predecessor as president, and was a vocal proponent of the “birther” conspiracy theory.
The theory cast doubt on Mr Obama’s birth in Hawaii, asserting that he was actually born in Kenya, and therefore ineligible to hold the office of president.
Mr Obama produced his long-form birth certificate in 2011. In 2016 Mr Trump publicly accepted that his predecessor was born in the USA.
