Trump shares racist video about Obamas; White House defends him

U.S. President Donald Trump used his social media account to share a video about election conspiracy theories that includes a racist depiction of former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as primates.

The Republican President’s Thursday (February 5) night post immediately drew backlash for its treatment of the nation’s first Black President and First Lady.

It was part of a flurry of social media activity that amplified Mr. Trump’s alleged claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, despite courts around the country and Mr. Trump’s Attorney General from his first term finding no evidence of fraud that could have affected the outcome.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt rejected criticism of the post that depicted the Obamas, who are Democrats. An Obama spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday (February 5).

Nearly all of the 62-second clip, which was among dozens of Truth Social posts from Mr. Trump overnight, appears to be from a conservative video alleging deliberate tampering with voting machines in battleground States as the 2020 Presidential votes were tallied.

At the 60-second mark is a quick scene of two primates, with the Obamas’ smiling faces imposed on them.

Those frames were taken from a longer video, previously circulated by an influential conservative meme maker. It shows Mr. Trump as “King of the Jungle” and depicts a range of Democratic leaders as animals, including Joe Biden, who is white, as a primate eating a banana.

“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” Ms. Leavitt said by text, referring to Disney’s 1994 feature film. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.” Mr. Trump did not comment on the video in his post.

The group Republicans Against Trump, a frequent social media critic of the president, criticised the post and its “racist image.” “There’s no bottom,” the group wrote.

Mr. Trump and the official White House social media accounts frequently repost memes and artificial intelligence-generated videos. As Ms. Leavitt did on Friday, Mr. Trump aides typically dismiss critiques and cast the images as humorous.

Mr. Trump also has a long history of intensely personal criticism of the Obamas and of using incendiary, sometimes racist, rhetoric.

Mr. Trump, in interviews that helped endear him to many conservative voters, repeatedly demanded that Mr. Obama produce birth records and prove he was a “natural-born citizen” as required to become President.

Mr. Obama eventually released his Hawaii records. Mr. Trump finally acknowledged during his 2016 campaign, after having won the Republican nomination, that Obama was born in Hawaii. But he immediately said, falsely, that his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton started those birtherism attacks on Mr. Obama.