Overview
- The removed Truth Social post was a 62-second video centered on debunked 2020 voting‑machine claims, ending with about a one‑second shot of Barack and Michelle Obama depicted as apes set to The Lion Sleeps Tonight.
- The White House said a staffer erroneously made the post and took it down roughly 12 hours after initially defending it as a meme portraying President Trump as “King of the Jungle.”
- Republican Sen. Tim Scott called the clip “the most racist thing” he has seen from the administration and urged deletion, with GOP figures including Sens. Roger Wicker and Pete Ricketts and Rep. Mike Lawler also demanding its removal and an apology.
- The imagery, widely condemned by Democrats and civil‑rights advocates as a racist trope, appears to trace to an October meme by X user XERIAS_X that depicts Democrats as animals and Trump as a lion.
- No public apology from the president was reported, and the episode adds to scrutiny of the administration’s pattern of amplifying AI‑generated and edited content targeting political opponents.