Late during the night of February 5, Trump’s Truth Social account shared a video that included a clip of former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama’s faces transposed on the bodies of apes through the use of AI. The video itself was roughly a minute long, and its primary contents discussed the unsubstantiated voter fraud allegations in the 2020 presidential election before briefly flipping to the clip meant to portray the Obamas.
The image was a clip from a longer video of Democrats’ faces being placed on various animal bodies, while Trump’s was placed on a lion, calling him “King of the Jungle.” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt initially dismissed the criticism, which came even from other Republican lawmakers, and simply pointed to the King of the Jungle meme at first. However, the White House later deleted the video and blamed it on a staffer.
Many Republican lawmakers spoke out against it, such as Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is the only Black Republican in the Senate. “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” wrote Scott, who leads Senate Republicans’ campaign arm. Trump himself, however, told reporters he didn’t see the entire video before it was shared, yet when asked if he would apologize, he said, “No, I didn’t make a mistake. I mean … I look at a lot of, thousands of, things, and I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine.” When asked, he added he condemned the racist portion of the video.
The Obamas themselves have said they have no comment on the matter and have not publicly commented on the post or any discourse surrounding it. This has not been the first instance of Trump’s social media account posting racist deepfakes, following artificial videos of Barack Obama being arrested in the Oval Office and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in a sombrero, but this one stood apart in terms of racist imagery. GOP Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio weighed in, “I do not feel the need to respond to every inflammatory statement made by the White House,” he said, “However, the release of racist images of former President Barack and First Lady Michelle Obama is offensive, heart breaking, and unacceptable. President Trump should apologize.”
Much of the backlash has come from other Republicans, and while there has been a large push for him to apologize, Trump has yet to retract his statement, regardless of how it might affect his party standing.
