US President Donald Trump on Thursday posted an election conspiracy video on Truth Social that depicted former president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as monkeys, drawing condemnation from prominent Democrats.
Near the end of the one-minute-long video, the Obamas’ faces are shown on monkeys for about one second.
The clip repeats false claims that ballot-counting company Dominion Voting Systems helped steal the 2020 election from Trump.
As of early Friday morning, the video had received more than 1,000 likes on the president’s social media platform.
The office of California Governor Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate and vocal critic of Trump, condemned the post.
“Disgusting behaviour by the President. Every single Republican must denounce this. Now,” Newsom’s press office account wrote on X.
Ben Rhodes, a former top national security advisor and close confidant of Barack Obama, also denounced the imagery.
“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,” he tweeted.
During the first year of his second term in the White House, Trump increased his use of hyper-realistic but fabricated visuals on Truth Social and other platforms, often glorifying himself while mocking his critics.
Last year, he posted an AI video showing Barack Obama being arrested in the Oval Office and appearing behind bars in an orange jumpsuit.
He later shared an AI clip of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — who is Black — wearing a fake moustache and a sombrero.
Jeffries described the image as racist.
