President Donald Trump has removed a racist post about Barack and Michelle Obama from his Truth Social account after bipartisan outrage over the ‘vile’ video - yet believes he has done nothing to apologise for.
Trump sparked backlash late on Thursday evening when he shared a video that showed a clip of a documentary by the Patriot News Outlet that alleges a Michigan investigation found compromising technology that had been used to fix the 2020 presidential election, which saw Democrat Joe Biden take the win over Trump.
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the 2020 election was rigged, despite there not being any evidence to prove so - and at first glance the video appeared to be a serious interview with an investigator into the matter.
However, during the last two seconds of the 1.02-minute clip, the video took a shocking turn, and at the minute mark, the song ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’ by the Tokens from Disney’s Lion King begins to play.
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Michelle and Barack Obama can then be seen with their heads superimposed onto the bodies of monkeys in what appears to be a rainforest.
Shortly after the video was posted, criticisms from both sides of the political divide began circulating, with many users particularly outraged that such a racist post was shared during black history month.
For many years, comparisons of Black people to primates have been used as a means to mock and dehumanise them, with the Obamas themselves having already experienced 'simianization' during their 8 years in the White House.
Yet while the public, which includes many prominent Republicans such as Trump endorser GOP Sen. Tim Scott, slammed the post and called for it’s removal, the White House itself was remarkably unbothered by the outrage and attempted to downplay it.
Initially, a White House official claimed that “A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down.”
However when quizzed about it during Friday’s press briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt weighed in on the situation as she argued that people were showing ‘fake outrage’ and that there was no hidden agenda behind the post.
"This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King," she said in a statement. ”Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
In the original meme referenced by Leavitt, Trump's head is superimposed on the body of a lion, while the faces of his political rivals, which at the time included Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton are also included. Notably however, none of their faces are superimposed on apes.
There are also no apes in The Lion King, with the only primate featured being Rafiki, a Mandrill, who looks nothing like the caricatures portrayed in the meme.
Following the backlash, Trump himself also commented on the situation as he told reporters that ‘of course’ he condemned the racist parts of the video - yet stated that he didn’t believe he had done anything wrong.
“No, I didn’t make a mistake,” he said on Air Force One, before admitting that he hadn’t watched the whole video. “I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine.”
"I looked in the first part and it was really about voter fraud in, and the machines, how crooked it is, how disgusting it is," Trump said. "Then I gave it to the people. Generally, they'd look at the whole thing. But I guess somebody didn’t, and they posted," Trump said.
"We took it down as soon as we found out about it," he added.
Topics: Donald Trump, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama
Phoebe Tonks