The White House removed a short election-conspiracy clip shared by President Trump after the video was found to include racist imagery that superimposed the faces of former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama onto dancing cartoon apes.
The post, uploaded to the president’s Truth Social account late Thursday and left online into Friday morning, promoted baseless claims about voting machines and concluded with the animated sequence. White House staffers deleted the material around noon on Friday.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt initially dismissed the reaction, calling the segment an internet meme tied to The Lion King and urging critics to “please stop the fake outrage.” The White House later said a junior staffer had mistakenly posted the clip.
The content drew unusually broad condemnation, including from Republicans. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the Senate’s only Black Republican and a frequent Trump ally, called it “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” and urged the president to remove the clip and apologize. CBS News reported that Mr. Trump called Mr. Scott after the rebuke and that the post was subsequently deleted.
The incident revived scrutiny of Mr. Trump’s long-running attacks on Mr. Obama, including his prior promotion of the debunked birther conspiracy that questioned Mr. Obama’s birthplace. Lawmakers across the GOP and other critics pressed for an apology even after the White House characterized the post as an accidental error.
CBS News senior correspondent Weijia Jiang noted the debate inside newsrooms over whether to show the image: publishing it risks amplifying a racist depiction, but omitting it can leave out crucial context for reporting the story. The episode added to tensions within the president’s party and renewed calls for a public response to the imagery.