The social media activities of Donald Trump often reach wild and unhinged heights that are no longer surprising. However, he drew massive criticism last week when he posted a video of the Obamas where Barack and Michelle Obama’s faces were superimposed on an ape’s body. Critics pointed out that the video was racist in nature.
Trump was clearly in a state of frenzy when he posted the video since there were about 66 posts from him that day between 10:36 p.m. and 12:25 a.m. Despite the highly offensive nature of the video, Trump and his press secretary Karoline Leavitt have refused to give it much attention with the latter even attempting to defend the post.
Ultimately, one of the White House staffers was blamed for the video and Trump steered clear of accountability. Now, on Thursday, when he was asked about the video again, the President gave a further unusual explanation behind that vile clip. Talking about the video, Trump said, “That was a video on, as you know, on voter fraud.”
Trump posting this video — especially during Black History Month— is a stark reminder of how Trump and his followers truly view people. And we’ll remember that in November. https://t.co/PpGKkSwEP4
— NAACP (@NAACP) February 6, 2026
He then added, “It was a fairly long video, and they had a little piece and it had to do with the Lion King. It’s doing very well, uh, it’s been shown all over the place, long before that was posted. But that was a very strong – and I’m sure you saw it – a very strong piece on voter fraud, and the piece we were talking about was all over the place, many times I believe, for years.”
It was not clear what he meant when he said that the piece “was all over the place, many times.” While the video does emphasize the false claim of the 2020 election being rigged, towards the end of it, Barack and Michelle Obama suddenly appear, with bodies of chimpanzees as the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight playing.
The video sparked outrage, even among Republicans. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, said, “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The president should remove it.”
Republican Roger Wicker showed similar sentiments, saying, “This is totally unacceptable. The president should take it down and apologize.”
Even though Leavitt tried to do some damage control, asking the media to stop focusing on such fake issues and instead talk about the real ones, the video was gone after a few hours and the White House blamed the whole thing on an anonymous staffer.
President Trump told CBS News’ @weijia he hasn’t disciplined or fired the staffer the administration said shared a racist video to the president’s Truth Social account.
The election conspiracy video shared on Trump’s account that included racist footage depicting former… pic.twitter.com/bXiGCERIcn
— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 12, 2026
It should be noted here that the only two people known to have access to Trump’s Truth Social are White House deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino and former One America News personality Natalie Harp and therefore it can be expected that the move was done by them.
On Thursday, Trump was also asked if that unnamed staffer who allegedly caused the fiasco was fired or at least disciplined. To this, Trump clearly said, “no.” Before the White House meeting on Thursday, Trump went on a spree to post his pictures with Black celebrities, but only with the criminal ones. He posted pictures with convicted felon Diddy, accused child molester Michael Jackson, and Mike Tyson, who has a troubling criminal history.
Trump’s words and actions following his posting of the “racist” video only show how easily he can avoid consequences and accountability for something so primitively vile even in this day and age. The Obamas, on the other hand, chose to handle the situation with dignity and did not make any comments on the matter.
