Donald Trump Faces Fierce Backlash After Sharing Clip Depicting Obamas as Monkeys

At some point after midnight, a verified account on Truth Social belonging to the US president pushed out a slick little election-conspiracy clip—one minute of familiar grievance, the sort of stuff that has been circulating since 2020 like a stubborn stain. Then, right near the end, the video did what racist propaganda has done for centuries: it dehumanised Black people.

For about a second, Barack and Michelle Obama appear with their faces superimposed on primates while The Tokens' 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' plays. It's blink-and-you-miss-it, which is precisely the point. The insult is designed to be deniable, meme-ready, shareable—cruelty that can be shrugged off as 'just a joke' by anyone determined not to see it.​

President Donald Trump shared the clip to his millions of followers, and by Thursday morning the backlash was already roaring across X and the wider US political internet. The question hanging in the air wasn't complicated: how does a sitting president end up amplifying material that leans on one of racism's oldest tropes?

Donald Trump Faces Fierce Backlash Over Racist Obama Clip

The video Trump posted repeats false claims that Dominion Voting Systems helped 'steal' the 2020 presidential election—an allegation that has been widely debunked and repeatedly described as false in mainstream reporting. It's framed as a tidy "exposé" of voting machine wrongdoing, the sort of content that offers believers the comfort of certainty: you didn't lose, you were robbed.

Then comes the jab. Near the end of the clip, the Obamas' faces are placed on AI-generated monkeys for roughly a second, with the soundtrack switching to 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight.' The Straits Times, summarising the post, noted the imagery appeared briefly but was unmistakable, and drew condemnation from prominent Democrats.

The White House did not immediately provide an on-record explanation in the reporting cited by LADbible, which said it had contacted the administration for comment. Deadline reported it was unclear whether Trump personally posted the video or was aware of the Obama segment when it was shared, but the effect is the same: the president's platform boosted it.

That ambiguity—'did he notice?'—has become a grim feature of modern political communication. In any other workplace, 'I didn't realise the racist bit was in the presentation' would not be a robust defence. For a president, it's arguably worse: either you saw it and didn't care, or you didn't see it because you're treating propaganda as content to be flung out indiscriminately.

Donald Trump Faces Fierce Backlash As AI Politics Turns Toxic

This isn't Trump's first flirtation with fabricated visuals targeting Obama. In 2025, Trump shared an AI-generated video depicting Obama being arrested in the Oval Office and later shown behind bars in an orange jumpsuit, with the Village People's 'YMCA' playing. That post landed amid claims from Trump ally Tulsi Gabbard—then Director of National Intelligence—that Obama administration officials were involved in a 'treasonous conspiracy' to undermine Trump's 2016 campaign.

Democracy Now reported that Trump repeated claims of 'treason' without evidence, while Obama condemned the allegations as 'bizarre' and 'a weak attempt at distraction'.

What's striking, and frankly exhausting, is the trajectory. The technology gets sharper, the clips get more "realistic", and the moral bar seems to sink with every repost. A deepfake arrest fantasy is one kind of political spite. A racist primate depiction is another—older, uglier, and historically freighted in ways no amount of "it was only a second" can wash away.​

Supporters who want to dismiss the clip as trolling should sit with the reality of what that trolling relies on. Depicting Black people as apes isn't edgy humour; it is a dehumanising trope with a long record of inciting hatred and justifying violence. The point of such imagery is not persuasion. It's permission: permission to sneer, to mock, to treat opponents as less than human.​

And this is where the presidency matters. Trump's online persona has always been combative, but the office amplifies everything. When the president posts something, it isn't just another account chasing likes. It signals what is acceptable, what is laughable, what is 'fair game'.​

It would be comforting to believe this is a mistake—a staff slip, a careless repost, a late-night doom-scroll gone wrong. But comfort is not analysis. The more plausible reading is that Trump understands exactly how attention works in 2026: outrage spikes engagement, engagement cements loyalty, loyalty becomes power.​

The Obamas, long out of office, are once again being used as props in that machine. The country should be tired of it. The president, evidently, is not.