Trump shares racist video depicting Obamas as apes on Truth Social, then removes it amid bipartisan outrage

(CNN) — President Donald Trump shared a racist video on his social media platform Thursday night that depicted former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes in a jungle, then removed it hours later amid bipartisan outrage, including from a close ally.

Just before noon, the White House blamed a staffer for the video posted to Trump’s Truth Social account and said the post had been removed. The statement came after serious backlash, including from GOP Sen. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, who called the post racist and said Trump 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,” the South Carolina Republican, who’s also the chair of the Senate GOP campaign committee, wrote on X.

The White House had earlier defended the post and downplayed the response to the video, calling it “fake outrage.” But just before noon, an official told CNN, “A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down.” By that time, the video had been up for nearly 12 hours. A GOP Senate official said Republican lawmakers had called Trump to discuss the post with him.

And it sent the White House into major damage control mode, sources said, with officials, advisers and allies reaching out to lawmakers and the media to try to dispute that Trump himself played any role. One White House adviser asserted that, “The president was not aware of that video, and was very let down by the staffer who put it out.” Another ally sought to place blame on a specific aide.

The Obamas briefly and suddenly appear near the end of the short video, which promotes false claims that voting machines helped steal the 2020 election, with their faces superimposed onto the bodies of apes. As the images appear, for about one second, the start of the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” plays in the background.

The post, which recalls the racist trope of comparing Black people with monkeys, prompted swift backlash, including from several Republican lawmakers who have had close relationships with the White House.

Rep. Mike Lawler of New York, who is considered one of the most vulnerable Republicans in Congress, condemned the Truth Social post and called on Trump to apologize.

“The President’s post is wrong and incredibly offensive — whether intentional or a mistake — and should be deleted immediately with an apology offered,” Lawler wrote on X.

Another New York Republican facing a tough reelection battle, Rep. Nick LaLota, also urged Trump to delete the post.

And in the minutes before its removal, two close White House allies in the Senate — Pete Ricketts of Nebraska and Roger Wicker of Mississippi — went public with their own calls for Trump to apologize, in a sign that criticism within the party was beginning to snowball.

“This is totally unacceptable,” Wicker, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, wrote on X. “The president should take it down and apologize.”

Neither Trump nor the White House has apologized.

But the post’s deletion marked an abrupt shift from just hours earlier, when White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had dismissed the initial outcry.

“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 in a statement. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

The clip of the Obamas, which was spliced into the end of a longer video promoting unfounded election conspiracies, appeared to come from a video shared last October by an X user and captioned “President Trump: King of the Jungle.”

That original video depicted several prominent Democrats as various animals, as well as showing the Obamas as apes.

The X user who posted that video appeared to be the same one who first posted a video that Trump had shared in October showing the president wearing a crown and flying a fighter jet dumping what appears to be waste on protesters at a “No Kings” rally.

CNN has reached out to the Obamas for comment.

The office of California Gov. Gavin Newsom condemned the video in a post on X, writing: “Disgusting behavior by the President. Every single Republican must denounce this. Now.”

The incident is the latest example of Trump drawing criticism for sharing racist content on his social media platform.

Last year, the president posted an apparent AI video depicting Barack Obama being arrested in the Oval Office. Later last year, Trump and members of his administration also shared digitally altered images and videos of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a fake mustache and a sombrero, imagery Jeffries publicly described as racist.

Trump also has a long history of posting and reposting conspiracy theories and other false claims. But it is very unusual for the president to take down a social media post — and even more rare to issue an apology or take responsibility for posts insulting large swaths of people.

As he was campaigning for president in October 2015, Trump re-tweeted a post questioning the mental fitness of Iowans.

That post was removed a few hours later, and Trump pinned blame on a “young intern” in a statement: “The young intern who accidentally did a Retweet apologizes.” He went on to lose the Iowa caucuses.

But Trump has also offered some insight into his social media philosophy, telling CNN in August of that year, “You know, I retweet – I retweet for a reason.”

This headline and story have been updated with additional developments.

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CNN’s Fadel Allassan and Kristen Holmes contributed to this report.