A video posted and deleted on Trump’s Truth Social account depicted the former president and first lady as apes, set to the Tokens’ “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”

White House tries to defend Trump’s racist mockery of Barack and Michelle Obama as The Lion King parody

A video posted and deleted on Trump's Truth Social account depicted the former president and first lady as apes, set to the Tokens’ "The Lion Sleeps Tonight."

By Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2022. Her work has previously appeared on MTV News, Teen Vogue, and *NME*.

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February 6, 2026 2:45 p.m. ET

U.S. President Donald Trump on June 27, 2025 in Washington, DC.; Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama on Aug.20, 2024. Credit:

Joe Raedle/Getty; Tom Williams/Getty

The White House is claiming that a racist video posted and later deleted from Donald Trump's Truth Social account that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes was a* Lion King* parody.**

The clip, which was posted without comment on Trump’s account last night, included an AI-generated portion at the end that featured the former President and First Lady with their heads superimposed onto the bodies of monkeys as The Tokens’ “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” played in the background. **

“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from *The Lion King*,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told PEOPLE when asked about the video. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

The video was posted erroneously by a White House staffer and has since been taken down, * *has learned. White House reps did not immediately respond to EW’s request for comment. **

Barack Obama listens as former first lady Michelle Obama delivers remarks during a ceremony to unveil their official White House portraits at the White House on Sept. 7, 2022 in Washington, DC.

Kevin Dietsch/Getty

The post, which evokes the racist trope of comparing Black people to monkeys and was shared less than a week into Black History Month, was met with swift condemnation from politicians across the aisle after it was posted onto Trump’s account.

“Trump posted a disgustingly racist video depicting the Obamas as apes,” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders wrote on X. “Are my Republican colleagues going to continue to bend the knee to a racist, authoritarian president who wants the American people to bow down before him?”

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Republican representative Mike Lawler also called out the video, writing, “The President’s post is wrong and incredibly offensive — whether intentional or a mistake — and should be deleted immediately with an apology offered."**

And, in his own post, Republican senator Tim Scott wrote, “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it.”

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In addition to the Obamas, the video also showed Trump’s head superimposed onto the body of a lion. Other politicians and celebrities were similarly transformed into animals, with former president Joe Biden as a monkey and Kamala Harris as a turtle.

*The View’*s Whoopi Goldberg, who famously voiced Shenzi the Hyena in the 1994 animated classic, was also superimposed onto the body of a hippopotamus in the clip.

President Donald Trump listens during a ceremony for the presentation of the Mexican Border Defense Medal in the Oval Office of the White House on Dec. 15, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Anna Moneymaker/Getty

The video posted on Trump’s account comes less than a year after the president posted a different AI-generated video of Obama being arrested and thrown in jail as the “Y.M.C.A” played in the background. **

“NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW,” the post read.

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