The post sat there for half a day, glowing on a presidential feed like a lit cigarette dropped in dry grass. Donald Trump had shared a video that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, and Washington did what it always does when the boss detonates a fresh outrage: it froze, then scrambled, then tried—clumsily—to pretend the blast radius was smaller than it was.
By the time it came down, the damage was already baked in. The Daily Beast reported that the post remained live for about 12 hours before it was deleted, and that Trump faced widespread condemnation, including pushback from some Republicans. ABC News also reported that the clip was removed after backlash and described the racist animation in the video’s ending.
This wasn’t a policy failure or a legislative stumble. It was something more elemental: a president amplifying racist imagery about America’s first Black president and former first lady, then offering a familiar defense—he didn’t see it, he didn’t watch the whole thing, someone else is at fault. If you’re looking for a tidy explanation, you won’t get one, because the core of this story is not tidiness. It’s a pattern of chaos and a culture of excuse-making.
Donald 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. pic.twitter.com/yYsXrlT4Me
— Cuckturd (@CattardSlim) February 6, 2026
Michael Wolff, Trump’s biographer and a longtime chronicler of the Trump ecosystem, described the internal reaction in blunt, almost weary terms. According to the Daily Beast, Wolff told Joanna Coles on the podcast Inside Trump’s Head that he spoke to people in the White House and, quoting them, their view was that Donald Trump was “off his meds.”
Wolff went further, saying staffers can recognize “when Trump is too Trumpy,” and that in moments like this, they believe “something pushed him over the edge,” another phrase he said they used.
“Off his meds” is the kind of line that travels fast because it sounds like a diagnosis without the accountability of a diagnosis. It’s also politically convenient: it shifts the discussion from the content of the post—racist imagery aimed at former president Barack Obama and wife Michelle Obama—to a vague insinuation about mental state, which can be used to soften blame or harden it, depending on who’s wielding it.
Still, the quote matters because it suggests panic behind the curtain. Not moral panic, necessarily. Operational panic—the kind that sets in when a staff realizes they are chasing the president’s impulses rather than steering them.
Democrats are calibrating with a moderate Republicans to Impeach Trump immediately for racism after the White House targeted the Obamas as Apes. pic.twitter.com/fT5rh4e0W4
— Marcel Regensburg (@marcel334) February 8, 2026
When pressed, Donald Trump didn’t exactly retreat. ABC News reported that speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, he said he didn’t see the full video and only watched the first part, which he claimed focused on “voter fraud,” adding, “I guess during the end of it, there was some kind of a thing that people don’t like. I wouldn’t like it either, but I didn’t see it.”
CNN similarly reported that Donald Trump refused to apologize, said he hadn’t viewed the ending, and suggested a staff member was responsible for posting it.
Then came the spin—because there is always spin. The Daily Beast reported that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to dismiss the video as a “Lion King meme,” even though, as the article notes, there are no apes in The Lion King.
The White House later claimed that an unnamed staffer posted the video, which the Daily Beast reported Donald Trump contradicted when he spoke on Air Force One, saying he didn’t watch the whole clip before posting.
This is what makes the episode feel so revealing. The administration isn’t arguing that the imagery wasn’t racist. It’s trying to argue it wasn’t intentional. That’s a thin reed to cling to when the post came from the president’s own account, and when the defense is essentially, “I didn’t look closely at what I put out to the world.”
During the first week of Black History Month, President Donald Trump shared a video on Truth Social that included imagery depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes a portrayal widely understood as a racist trope.
Regardless of intention, this warrants clear condemnation.… pic.twitter.com/qvilQrjgCz
— Armstrong Williams 🇺🇸 (@Arightside) February 6, 2026
There’s also the political fear—always lurking behind the moral language. Former Trump chief of staff Mick Mulvaney warned on NewsNation that posts like this could be “disastrous” for Republicans ahead of the 2026 midterms, with vulnerable incumbents “beside themselves” at the prospect of defending it to voters, as summarized by AOL’s reposting of the report. That reaction is less about outrage and more about survival, which tells you plenty about how American politics metabolizes scandal in 2026.
Wolff, in the Daily Beast report, argued that Trump’s Truth Social sprees function as a kind of hiding place because fewer people see them than they would on X, and that if more people did see them, they would view the behavior as “truly profoundly peculiar.” But this particular post escaped containment—because racism, when delivered by a president, doesn’t stay niche for long.
