Trump Posts Racist AI Video of Barack and Michelle Obama as Apes

President Donald Trump shared a wildly racist video of former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes during a late-night posting spree on Truth Social.

In yet another erosion of America’s and Trump’s authority on the world stage, the president shared a video on Truth Social late Thursday that ended with a short clip of the Obamas’ laughing heads superimposed on the bodies of apes, while the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” plays in the background. The video bore a watermark tag of the same account behind the AI-generated video of Trump dropping a massive load of shit on protesters from a fighter jet.

Most of the 62-second video was actually focused on a conspiracy theory that voting machines in certain battleground states had been rigged to favor Joe Biden. It was only the final seconds that contained racist drivel.

The Bulwark’s Tim Miller hit back at speculation that Trump hadn’t meant to share the racist clip. “It was intentional and Trump has been making racist attacks on the Obamas for like 20 years now hope that clears it up for you,” he wrote in a post on X.

Ben Rhodes, a former speechwriter for Obama, wrote on X: “Let it haunt Trump and his racist followers that future Americans will embrace the Obamas as beloved figures while studying him as a stain on our history.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom’s press office also slammed the video. “Disgusting behavior by the President. Every single Republican must denounce this. Now,” a post on X read.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed concerns about the video Friday morning. “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 wrote in an emailed statement to Variety. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

Leavitt also shared the full video, which depicted Hillary Clinton as a boar and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries as a meerkat—but those two were noticeably absent from the clip Trump shared.

Trump normally uses his Truth Social account to post presidential proclamations, appeals to foreign leaders, or screeds against his enemies. But on Thursday, Trump shared a video of a dog being summoned by a can of whipped cream, and another clip of Bruce Lee from Enter the Dragon (1973). He also endorsed “a true friend, fighter, and WINNER,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has become something of a model leader for those on the contemporary right after he systematically weakened his country’s free press, replacing it with a state-controlled propaganda machine.