‘Disgusting behaviour by President’: ‘Most openly racist’ Trump shares video depicting Obamas as monkeys, sparks outrage

US President Donald Trump sparked outrage on the internet after he posted a video on his Truth Social account which depicted former president Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, as monkeys. The 1-minute-long clip focused on claims by the ballot-counting company Dominion Voting Systems that it helped steal the 2020 election from Trump.

The American president shared the clip on Thursday (Feb 5) in which Obamas' face appeared on the body of a monkey for about one second, with the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight" playing in the background. Shortly, the video received a few thousand likes on Trump's platform. It drew extreme criticism from Democrats and other public figures, with many highlighting the "racist" angle of the clip.

The office of California Governor Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, condemned Trump's act of sharing the clip and said, “Disgusting behaviour by the President. Every single Republican must denounce this. Now."

Former top national security adviser and close confidant of Barack Obama, Ben Rhodes, wrote 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."

Barack Obama is the only Black president in the history of the US. And this was not the first time Trump used artificial intelligence and doctored images and videos to attack his critics. In 2025, Trump posted a video showing Obama behind bars in an orange jumpsuit. He also shared an AI clip of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a fake moustache.