Did trump post video on jungle theme
Executive summary
Yes — President Donald Trump posted a late-night Truth Social video that included a brief jungle-themed clip showing former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama with their faces superimposed on primates, a post that was widely condemned and later removed from his account [1] [2].
1. The post and its provenance
The video appeared on Trump’s Truth Social on Feb. 5, 2026 and ran roughly 62 seconds, with the offensive primate frames appearing near the 60-second mark; news outlets report that nearly all of the clip was taken from a longer conservative meme alleging 2020 election fraud and that the specific frames of the Obamas came from a previously circulated internet meme credited to an account called @XERIAS_X [1] [3] [4].
2. What the jungle imagery showed
Multiple outlets documented that the short scene superimposed the Obamas’ smiling faces onto the bodies of apes, set in a jungle and timed to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” while the larger meme depicted Trump as “King of the Jungle” and other Democrats as various animals — a montage that critics said echoed long-standing racist caricatures [2] [5] [6].
3. White House reaction and shifting explanations
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt initially defended the clip as coming from “an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” and urged critics to stop the “fake outrage,” but by midday the administration said a staffer had erroneously posted the video and it was taken down [7] [8] [9].
4. The president’s stance and the deletion
Mr. Trump told reporters he “didn’t make a mistake,” saying he had only seen the beginning and “passed it on,” and he declined to apologize even after the post stayed up for about 12 hours and was eventually deleted from his account [1] [8] [5].
5. Political fallout and bipartisan condemnation
The post triggered swift bipartisan criticism: civil-rights groups and Democrats denounced it as racist, and several Republicans — including Sen. Tim Scott — publicly called it unacceptable, prompting unusually stark GOP rebukes that pressured the administration’s reversal and removal of the clip [8] [5] [10].
6. How news organizations framed the act and its history
Major outlets placed this episode within a pattern of controversial and often racially charged imagery associated with Trump and his social media activity, noting prior instances where racist or AI-edited content was reposted by the president’s accounts and pointing to how government-associated platforms have sometimes amplified similar messaging [3] [4] [6].
7. Bottom line and evidentiary limits
The available reporting establishes that the video was posted from Trump’s Truth Social account, contained a jungle-themed meme clip showing the Obamas as primates, drew widespread condemnation, and was removed after about 12 hours with the White House saying a staffer posted it in error; reporting does not fully resolve who reviewed or approved the post before it went up beyond statements from the White House and anonymous officials [1] [9] [7].