The video featured footage depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.

Trump won’t apologize for posting since-deleted racist video of Obamas: ‘I didn’t make a mistake’

The video featured footage depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.

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February 7, 2026 11:37 a.m. ET

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President Donald Trump at the 'Melania' world premiere in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 29, 2026; Barack Obama and Michelle Obama at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 7, 2022. Credit:

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty; Kevin Dietsch/Getty

- Donald Trump refused to apologize for a racist video that was posted on his Truth Social account: "I didn't make a mistake."

- The footage showed Barack and Michelle Obama's faces superimposed onto the bodies of monkeys.

- Trump said that he "looked at the beginning" of the video and concluded that "it was fine" without seeing the Obama footage.

Donald Trump is doubling down on a racist video posted to his Truth Social account.

On Friday, the president responded to a journalist asking if he would apologize for the since-deleted AI-generated video that appeared on Trump's official Truth Social page, which featured a depiction of Barack and Michelle Obama's faces superimposed onto the bodies of apes.

"No, I didn't make a mistake," Trump said while speaking to a group of reporters on Air Force One, confirming that he will not apologize for the post.

Set to the Tokens' song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," the video also featured Trump's face superimposed onto a lion, and depicted other political figures as animals, including a monkey version of Joe Biden and a turtle version of Kamala Harris.

Donald Trump speaks at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 5, 2026.

Aaron Schwartz/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty

** previously learned that the video was posted erroneously by a White House staffer and has since been taken down.

However, Trump's further comments on the matter on Friday suggest that he personally approved the post.

"I mean, I look at a lot of thousands of things. I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine," the president said of the video. "I guess it was a takeoff on *The Lion King* and certainly it was a very strong post in terms of voter fraud." (Trump has repeatedly made false claims about election interference in every presidential election in which he has participated.)

The president did seemingly acknowledge that the last section of the video, which featured the Obama monkey imagery, was more problematic than the rest of the footage, and claimed that he had no knowledge of that portion of the video when it was posted.

"Nobody knew that that was in the end," he said. "If they would have seen it and probably they would have had the sense to take it down."

When later asked if the Truth Social post could hurt Republicans with Black voters, Trump said no and went on to tout his achievements

"I've done great with Black voters... I've been great to them, Black voters have been great to me," he said. "And I am, by the way, the least racist president you've had in a long time, as far as I'm concerned."

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White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt previously tried to defend the video as a *Lion King* parody.

"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 told PEOPLE of the video on Friday. "Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public."

The video, which played into the racist trope of dehumanizing Black people by comparing them to primates, drew outrage from politicians on both sides of the aisle.

Barack Obama and Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Aug. 20, 2024.

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty

"The President's post is wrong and incredibly offensive — whether intentional or a mistake — and should be deleted immediately with an apology offered," Mike Lawler, a Republican Congressman from New York, wrote on social media.

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"Trump posted a disgustingly racist video depicting the Obamas as apes," Bernie Sanders, a Democratic senator from Vermont, posted on X. "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?"

Tim Scott, a Republican senator from South Caroline, wrote, "Praying it was fake because it's the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House. The President should remove it."

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