Donald Trump's Truth Social account sparked outrage on Friday with a racist video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. The 79-year-old former president's post, shared during his frequent late-night posting sprees, features the Obamas' laughing faces superimposed on the bodies of primates in a jungle setting, bobbing to the song 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'. This clip appears at the end of a minute-long video promoting Trump's false claim that he won the 2020 election, when he actually lost to Joe Biden. The video is a repost of content from Patriot News Outlet, a website supportive of Trump. By 8.30am ET, the post had 4,000 likes but faced condemnation from both sides of the political spectrum for its racist imagery. The Democratic California governor, Gavin Newsom's press office, and podcaster Ben Rhodes, a former Obama administration official, were among the first to denounce the post. Rhodes highlighted the potential impact on future Americans' view of the Obamas, while Adam Parkhomenko, a Democratic political strategist, called it 'overt racism'. The controversy echoes a 2024 allegation that Trump used a racial slur on his TV show, 'The Apprentice'. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, attempted to downplay the outrage by linking to a right-wing account's video, which also features racist imagery of prominent Democrats. However, the post's primary focus remains on Trump's baseless claims about the 2020 election and the role of Dominion Voting Systems.
