To say the least, President Trump ruffled some feathers across the Beltway on Friday.
Late Thursday night, he shared a video on Truth Social alleging vote-counting anomalies in several battleground states during the 2020 election.
Unfortunately, at the end of the video, the first few frames of a second clip briefly appeared, showing Barack and Michelle Obama depicted as monkeys. The optics were terrible and, understandably, a social media firestorm ensued.
One X user wrote, “The argument that Trump isn’t a racist are over. This man is 100% a racist.”
Another called Trump “the most openly racist President since slavery was abolished, just shared a video of Michelle & Barack Obama as APES. This is what the Republican party is now.”
Piers Morgan posted on X that he “sincerely hope[s] President @realDonaldTrump didn’t realise this 60-second clip he reposted last night didn’t end with the vile racist imagery of the Obamas as apes.” He called on Trump to delete the post immediately.
The criticism wasn’t confined to the left. Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who is black, said the video was the “most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House.”
Trump subsequently deleted the post.
But context matters. The second clip was an AI-generated Lion King meme video that depicted Trump as the Lion King — naturally — with notable past and present Democratic figures from the Washington establishment portrayed as animals of lower status. For example, Hillary Clinton was cast as a warthog, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as a meerkat, Whoopi Goldberg as a hippopotamus, and former President Joe Biden as a baboon.
The election interference video is shown below, along with a screenshot of Michelle Obama from the Lion King video that briefly appeared at the end.
The Lion King meme video can be viewed in full below:
It remains unclear how the two-second Lion King clip ended up attached to the election fraud video. The most plausible explanation is an editing error, as the X user notes in the post below. There is no serious reason to believe Trump intentionally included it.
Politico reporter Ben Johansen reached out to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt for a comment on Friday morning, who saw the situation as much ado about nothing. She told Johansen, “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King. Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
Leavitt’s point is well taken. Manufactured outrage has become a defining feature of the modern left, and few figures trigger it faster than Trump. Let them have their moment. In the meantime, most reasonable voters — like the two cited below — are likely to see the episode for what it was: a mistake, not a statement of intent.
Trump said Friday night that he would not fire the staffer responsible for the error.
Finally, Hakeem Jeffries weighed in with his usual vitriol. He posted his rant on X: “This disgusting video, posted by the so-called president, was done intentionally. … F*** Donald Trump and his vile, racist and malignant behavior.”
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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