President Trump Posts, Then Deletes Obama’s as Monkeys in Lion King Meme Video [VIDEO]

President Donald Trump posted a video on Truth Social late on February 5, 2026 (which was quickly deleted on February 6 amid backlash), that included a clip depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama with their faces on ape/monkey bodies in a jungle setting.

Full Clip from President Trump’s Deleted Truth Social Post:

The imagery played over the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” and it was part of a longer segment tied to false 2020 election fraud claims.

Multiple major news outlets (including AP, NBC News, USA Today, The Guardian, BBC, and others) reported on this, describing it as a racist depiction invoking a long-standing derogatory trope comparing Black people to primates. The video was a short clip (around 1 minute total, with the Obama portion brief at the end), apparently excerpted from a broader internet meme/AI-generated video where various Democrats were shown as animals (e.g., Biden as a primate eating a banana, Hillary Clinton as a warthog), and Trump as a lion/”King of the Jungle.”

The White House initially defended it via Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt as part of an “internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King,” dismissing criticism as “fake outrage.” However, critics noted that Disney’s The Lion King (1994) features no apes/monkeys in that way, and the imagery doesn’t align directly. After bipartisan outrage—including from Republican Sen. Tim Scott (who called it “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House”) and others—the post was removed, with the White House later attributing it to a staffer’s error.It wasn’t a direct scene from The Lion King or Animal Kingdom (Disney’s theme park); it was a manipulated/meme-style video using those themes loosely. The post sparked widespread condemnation as racist, though some defenses framed it as political satire rather than targeted racism.