Trump's racist post about Obamas is deleted after backlash despite White
House earlier defending it
[February 07, 2026]
By BILL BARROW and JOSH BOAK
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s racist social media post
featuring former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as
primates in a jungle was deleted Friday after a backlash from both
Republicans and Democrats who criticized the video as offensive.
Trump said later Friday that he won't apologize for the post: “I didn't
make a mistake,” he said.
The Republican president’s Thursday night post was blamed on a staffer
after widespread backlash, from civil rights leaders to veteran
Republican senators, for its treatment of the nation’s first Black
president and first lady. A rare admission of a misstep by the White
House, the deletion came hours after press secretary Karoline Leavitt
dismissed “fake outrage” over the post. After calls for its removal —
including by Republicans — the White House said a staffer had posted the
video erroneously.
The post was part of a flurry of overnight activity on Trump's Truth
Social account that amplified his false claims that the 2020 election
was stolen from him, despite courts around the country and Trump's
first-term attorney general finding no evidence of systemic fraud.
Trump has a record of intensely personal criticism of the Obamas and of
using incendiary, sometimes racist, rhetoric — from feeding the lie that
Obama was not a native-born U.S. citizen to crude generalizations about
majority-Black countries.
The post came in the first week of Black History Month and days after a
Trump proclamation cited “the contributions of black Americans to our
national greatness” and “the American principles of liberty, justice,
and equality.”
An Obama spokeswoman said the former president, a Democrat, had no
response.
‘An internet meme’
Nearly all of the 62-second clip appears to be from a conservative video
alleging deliberate tampering with voting machines in battleground
states as 2020 votes were tallied. At the 60-second mark is a quick
scene of two jungle primates, with the Obamas’ smiling faces imposed on
them.
Those frames originated from a separate video, previously circulated by
an influential conservative meme maker. It shows Trump as “King of the
Jungle” and depicts Democratic leaders as animals, including Joe Biden,
who is white, as a jungle primate eating a banana.
“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the
King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,”
Leavitt said by text.
Disney's 1994 feature film that Leavitt referenced is set on the
savannah, not in the jungle, and it does not include great apes.
“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that
actually matters to the American public,” Leavitt added.
By noon, the post had been taken down, with responsibility placed on a
Trump subordinate.
Trump, answering questions from reporters accompanying him Friday night
aboard Air Force One, said the video was about fraudulent elections and
that he liked what he saw.
“I liked the beginning. I saw it and just passed it on, and I guess
probably nobody reviewed the end of it,” he said.
Asked if he condemned the video's racism, Trump said, “Of course I do.”
The White House explanation raises questions about control of Trump’s
social media account, which he's used to levy import taxes, threaten
military action, make other announcements and intimidate political
rivals. The president often signs his name or initials after policy
posts.
The White House did not immediately respond to an inquiry about how
posts are vetted and when the public can know when Trump himself is
posting.
Mark Burns, a pastor and a prominent Trump supporter who is Black, said
Friday on X that he'd spoken “directly” with Trump and that he
recommended to the president that he fire the staffer who posted the
video and publicly condemn what happened.
“He knows this is wrong, offensive, and unacceptable,” Burns posted.
Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., told The
Associated Press she does “not buy the White House's commentary.”
“If there wasn’t a climate, a toxic and racist climate within the White
House, we wouldn’t see this type of behavior regardless of who it’s
coming from,” Clarke said, adding that Trump “is a racist, he’s a bigot,
and he will continue to do things in his presidency to make that known.”
Condemnation across the political spectrum
Trump and White House social media accounts frequently repost memes and
artificial intelligence-generated videos. As Leavitt did Friday, Trump
allies typically cast them as humorous.
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Former President Barack Obama talks with then President-elect Donald
Trump as Melania Trump reads the funeral program before the state
funeral for former President Jimmy Carter at Washington National
Cathedral in Washington, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin,
File)
This time, condemnations flowed from across the spectrum — along with
demands for an apology that doesn't appear to be coming.
At a Black History Month market in Harlem, the historically Black
neighborhood in New York City, vendor Jacklyn Monk said Trump’s post was
embarrassing even if it was eventually deleted. “The guy needs help. I'm
sorry he's representing our country. … It’s horrible that it was this
month, but it would be horrible if it was in March also.”
In Atlanta, Rev. Bernice King, daughter of the assassinated civil rights
icon Martin Luther King Jr., resurfaced her father's words: “Yes. I'm
Black. I'm proud of it. I'm Black and beautiful.” Black Americans, she
said, “are beloved of God as postal workers and professors, as a former
first lady and president. We are not apes.”
The U.S. Senate's lone Black Republican, Tim Scott of South Carolina,
called on Trump to take down the post. “Praying it was fake because it’s
the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” said Scott,
who chairs Senate Republicans' midterm campaign arm.
Another Republican, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, is white but
represents the state with the largest percentage of Black residents.
Wicker called the post “totally unacceptable” and said the president
should apologize.
Some Republicans who face tough reelections this November voiced
concerns, as well. The result was an unusual cascade of intraparty
criticism for a president who has enjoyed a stranglehold over fellow
Republicans who stayed silent during previous Trump controversies for
fear of a public spat with the president or losing his endorsement in a
future campaign.
NAACP President Derrick Johnson called the video “utterly despicable”
and pointed to Trump's wider political concerns that could help explain
Republicans' willingness to speak out. Johnson asserted that Trump is
trying anything to distract from economic conditions and attention on
the Jeffrey Epstein case files.
“You know who isn’t in the Epstein files? Barack Obama,” he said. “You
know who actually improved the economy as president? Barack Obama.”
A long history of racism
There is a long history in the U.S. of powerful white figures
associating Black people with animals, including apes, in demonstrably
false, racist ways. The practice dates to 18th century cultural racism
and pseudo-scientific theories used to justify the enslavement of Black
people, and later to dehumanize freed Black people as uncivilized
threats to white people.
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote in
his famous text “Notes on the State of Virginia” that Black women were
the preferred sexual partners of orangutans. President Dwight
Eisenhower, discussing school desegregation in the 1950s, suggested
white parents were rightfully concerned about their daughters being in
classrooms with “big Black bucks.” Obama, as a candidate and president,
was featured as a monkey or other primates on T-shirts and other
merchandise.
In his 2024 campaign, Trump said immigrants were “poisoning the blood of
our country,” language similar to what Adolf Hitler used to dehumanize
Jews in Nazi Germany.
During his first White House term, Trump called a swath of
majority-Black, developing nations “shithole countries.” He initially
denied saying it but admitted in December 2025 that he did.
When Obama was in the White House, Trump pushed false claims that the
44th president, who was born in Hawaii, was born in Kenya and
constitutionally ineligible to serve. Trump, in interviews that helped
endear him to conservatives, demanded that Obama prove he was a
“natural-born citizen” as required to become president.
Obama eventually released birth records, and Trump finally acknowledged
during his 2016 campaign, after having won the Republican nomination,
that Obama was born in Hawaii. But immediately after, he said, falsely,
that his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton started the birtherism
attacks.
___
Barrow reported from Atlanta. Associated Press journalists Moriah
Balingit in Washington, Darlene Superville in West Palm Beach, Fla., and
Ted Shaffrey in New York contributed to this report.
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