White House deletes racist Trump post depicting Obamas as apes
-AFP
A video shared on United States President Donald Trump’s social media account that depicted former president Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as apes was deleted on Friday, following criticism that Trump’s post evoked racist imagery long used to dehumanise people of African descent.
“A White House staffer erroneously made the post,” said a White House official, who declined to be named. “It has been taken down.”
The statement came hours after White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt described as “fake outrage” a wave of negative reactions to the video, including from several prominent Republican lawmakers.
Late on Thursday, Trump shared a minute-long video amplifying the Republican US president’s false claims that his 2020 election defeat was the result of fraud. Spliced into the video was an apparently AI-generated clip of dancing primates superimposed with the Obamas’ heads.
The post on Trump’s Truth Social network drew swift criticism from prominent political figures, including Republican Senator Tim Scott, a Trump ally who is Black.
“Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” Scott said on X. “The president should remove it.”
Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it. https://t.co/gADoM13ssZ
Republican Representative Mike Lawler of New York was among several other prominent political figures who said Trump should apologise and delete the post.
Prior to the post being deleted, Leavitt said it was “from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the king of the jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King”. Trump’s clip included a song from that musical.
White supremacists have for centuries depicted people of African ancestry as monkeys as part of campaigns to dehumanise and dominate Black populations.
“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,” said Ben Rhodes, a former Obama aide, on X.
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. https://t.co/zDMdFtESJ3
The office of California Governor Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate and a prominent Trump critic, slammed "disgusting behavior."
Trump has a history of sharing racist rhetoric and long promoted the false conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. In December, Trump described Somalis as “garbage” who should be thrown out of the country.
He has referred to that and other developing nations as “shithole countries.” He was also criticised last year for depicting House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who is Black, with a superimposed handlebar moustache and a sombrero.
Civil rights advocates have said Trump’s rhetoric has become increasingly bold, normalised, and politically permissible.
“Donald Trump’s video is blatantly racist, disgusting, and utterly despicable,” said Derrick Johnson, national president of the NAACP, a civil rights group, in an emailed statement. “Voters are watching and will remember this at the ballot box.”
Last year, he posted a video generated by artificial intelligence showing Obama being arrested in the Oval Office and appearing behind bars in an orange jumpsuit.
In December, Trump described Somalis as "garbage" who should be thrown out of the country. He has referred to that and other developing nations as "shithole countries." He was also criticised last year for depicting Hakeem Jeffries, who is Black, with a superimposed handlebar mustache and a sombrero.
As of early Friday, the video had been liked several thousand times on the president's social media platform. A spokesperson for the Obamas declined to comment.
Obama is the only Black president in American history and backed Trump's opponent Kamala Harris on the campaign trail in the 2024 presidential election.
Billionaire Trump launched his own political career by pushing the racist and false "birther" conspiracy theory that his Democratic predecessor was lying about being born in the United States.Trump has long had a bitter rivalry with Obama, who was president from 2009 to 2017, taking particular umbrage at the Democrat's popularity and the fact that he won the Nobel peace prize.
In the first year of his second term in the White House, Trump has ramped up his use of hyper-realistic but fabricated AI visuals on Truth Social and other platforms, often glorifying himself while lampooning his critics. He has used the provocative posts to rally his conservative base.
An AI-generate video in one of the posts, showing fighter jets dumping human waste on protesters, was created by the same X user who made the video showing the Obamas as monkeys.
Since returning to the White House, Trump has drawn criticism from his opponents for leading a crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion programmes.
US federal anti-discrimination programmes were born of the 1960s civil rights struggle, mainly led by Black Americans, for equality and justice after hundreds of years of slavery, whose abolition in 1865 saw other institutional forms of racism enforced.