October 2, 2026
WASHINGTON (AP) — A social media post on President Donald Trump’s account featuring former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as primates in a jungle was deleted after a backlash from both Republicans and Democrats who criticized the video as racist.
The Thursday night post was deleted Friday and blamed on a staffer after widespread backlash, from civil rights leaders to veteran Republican senators, for its treatment of the nation’s first Black president and first lady. The deletion came hours after press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed “fake outrage” over the post. After calls for its removal for being racist -- including by Republicans -- the White House said a staffer had posted the video erroneously, and it had been taken down.
The post came in the first week of Black History Month and days after a Trump proclamation that cited “the contributions of black Americans to our national greatness and their enduring commitment to the American principles of liberty, justice, and equality.”
An Obama spokeswoman said the former president, a Democrat, had no response.
Nearly all of the 62-second clip, which was among dozens of Truth Social posts on the Trump account 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 separate video, previously circulated by an influential conservative meme maker. It shows Trump as “King of the Jungle” and depicts a range of Democratic leaders as animals, including Joe Biden, who is white, as a jungle 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,” Leavitt said by text.
Disney's 1994 feature film that Leavitt referenced is set on the savannah, not in the jungle, and it does not include great apes.
“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public,” Leavitt added.
By noon, the post had been taken down with responsibility placed on a Trump subordinate.
The White House explanation raised additional questions about the control of Trump’s social media account.
The White House did not immediately respond to questions about its process for vetting posts and how it guarantees that the public knows when Trump himself is posting.
Trump and the official White House social media accounts frequently repost memes and artificial intelligence-generated videos. As Leavitt did on Friday, Trump aides typically dismiss critiques and cast the images as humorous.
Yet while it was still up, Trump's post drew condemnation from across the political and ideological spectrum.
The Rev. Bernice King, daughter of the assassinated civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., resurfaced her father's words: “Yes. I'm Black. I'm proud of it. I'm Black and beautiful.” She praised Black Americans as “diverse, innovative, industrious, inventive” and added, “We are beloved of God as postal workers and professors, as a former first lady and president. We are not apes.”
The U.S. Senate's lone Black Republican, Tim Scott of South Carolina, called on Trump to take down the post. “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” Scott, who chairs Senate Republicans' midterm campaign arm, said on social media.
Another Republican, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, is white but represents the state with the largest percentage of Black residents. Wicker called the post “totally unacceptable” and said the president should apologize.
Some Republicans who face tough reelections this November voiced concerns as well, feeding an unusual cascade of intraparty criticism for the president.
“Donald Trump’s video is blatantly racist, disgusting, and utterly despicable,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement.
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