Donald Trump does not often make a habit of taking down Truth Social posts when they spark offense. He did do so on Friday, after one such post, featuring Barack and Michelle Obama depicted as apes, was widely denounced as racist, including by multiple Republican members of Congress.
And in doing so, the White House blamed a staffer, not Trump himself.
The offending post featured a long, bogus conspiracy theory about the 2020 election, with the likely AI-generated moment of the Obamas as apes spliced in at the end. That video had been taken from a different video, which had featured a jungle motif.
“The clip, set to ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight,’ was spliced near the end of a 62-second video that promoted conspiracy theories about anomalies in the 2020 presidential election,” was how the New York Times described the clip. “It was the latest in a long pattern by Mr. Trump of promoting offensive imagery and slurs about Black Americans and others.”
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“Across Mr. Trump’s administration, racist images and slogans have become common on official sites. The White House, Labor Department and Homeland Security Department have all promoted social media posts that echo white supremacist messaging,” the Times added.
“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an initial statement. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
By midday on Friday, the White House had told the press that “a White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down.” That statement implies that Trump is not in fact the author of his own social media posts, although Trump has not traditionally made clear which posts are written by him and which are by staffers.
Update: “A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down” —White House official https://t.co/TAN5crsOuV
— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) February 6, 2026
There were some shocked reactions online to the series of events.
There is nothing more quintessentially Trumpian than posting a horribly, racist post … and then blaming someone else for it. https://t.co/azigmWfDBX
— Michael A. Cohen (NOT TRUMP’S FORMER FIXER) (@speechboy71) February 6, 2026
Trump posted a disgustingly racist video depicting the Obamas as apes.
Are my Republican colleagues going to continue to bend the knee to a racist, authoritarian president who wants the American people to bow down before him? pic.twitter.com/GO9h5A2ah8
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 6, 2026
I’m old enough to remember when the photo on the left was enough to destroy a presidential campaign. But Trump posts outright racist images of the Obamas and America just calls it “Friday” My Goodness, how far we’ve fallen. pic.twitter.com/UZgGvguOYY
— @jeffpawlinski (@JeffPawlinski) February 6, 2026
Trump entered the political consciousness as a leader of the insanely racist “birther movement,” in case you don’t recall.
— john (@johnsemley3000) February 6, 2026
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
