Is the White House meme of the Obamas depicted as monkeys real?

1. What was posted, and where did it appear?

Late on Thursday a roughly one‑minute video that included a brief clip of the Obamas portrayed as apes was shared from President Trump’s Truth Social account; the clip was embedded in a longer AI‑style meme about the 2020 election and showed the Obamas’ faces superimposed on cartoon primates set to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” before the post was deleted about 12 hours later ^{[1] [5] [3]}.

2. Who created the original meme and how do outlets describe its origin?

Multiple outlets report the Obama footage appears to have been lifted from an October post by a conservative meme creator on X (identified as Xerias / @XERIAS_X), which depicted Trump as a “King of the Jungle” figure and various Democrats as animals — reporters trace the clip to that longer video rather than an original White House production ^{[3] [4] [5]}.

3. How did the White House respond and what explanations were offered?

The White House initially defended the post as “from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from ‘The Lion King,’” then after backlash a White House official said a staffer had “erroneously” made the post and it was taken down; that explanation has been reported by several outlets but rests on internal White House statements and an anonymous official ^{[1] [2] [5]}.

4. Why the depiction is widely described as racist and who condemned it?

News organizations and commentators placed the imagery in historical context: depicting Black people as apes is a centuries‑old dehumanizing trope used to justify slavery and racial violence, and lawmakers from both parties — notably Sen. Tim Scott (R‑S.C.) — publicly condemned the post as racist and urged its removal ^{[6] [7] [8]}.

5. What remains uncertain or unverified by reporting so far?

Public reporting establishes the clip’s presence on the president’s account, its provenance in a pro‑Trump meme on X, and the White House’s statement that a staffer posted it in error, but open questions remain: outlets rely on White House explanations and anonymous officials for the “erroneous staffer” claim, and no independent forensic attribution proving who physically posted it from the account has been published in these reports ^{[2] [5] [9]}.

6. The competing narratives and implicit agendas to watch for

There are two clear narratives in the coverage: one, advanced by the White House, frames the footage as an innocuous internet meme and blames a staffer’s mistake; the other — advanced by many critics and contextualized by outlets citing racist history — treats the post as an intentional or at least recklessly tone‑deaf act that taps a familiar dehumanizing trope; readers should note that the White House defense is self‑interested and that independent confirmation of intent or authorship beyond White House claims has not been published in the cited reporting ^{[9] [6] [2]}.

7. Bottom line for readers following the story

The visual meme depicting the Obamas as monkeys was real in the sense that it was posted from the president’s official social account and later deleted; mainstream reporting traces the footage to a pro‑Trump meme posted on X in October and records the White House’s shifting explanations, but reporting does not yet offer independent, forensically verified proof of who inside the White House account hit “post” or whether the president personally approved it ^{[1] [3] [2]}.