Did President Trump post a picture of Barrack Obama and Michelle that depicts them as apes or monkeys?
Executive summary
President Donald Trump posted a video on his Truth Social account that included a brief clip showing former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama with their faces superimposed on ape bodies; the post was removed after bipartisan backlash and the White House later said a staffer had mistakenly posted it [1] [2] [3]. The video’s imagery invoked a long-standing racist trope comparing Black people to primates, prompting condemnation across the political spectrum and defensive claims from the White House that do not change the fact of the post or its removal [4] [2] [5].
1. What happened, in short
Late on Feb. 5, 2026, the president’s Truth Social account shared a roughly one-minute video amplifying false claims about the 2020 election; near the end of that video a short clip—about one second in many reports—depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes with their faces superimposed on primate bodies before the post was deleted the next morning amid widespread outrage [1] [6] [4].
2. How news organizations and lawmakers described the image
Major outlets uniformly reported the clip as a racist depiction of the Obamas as apes, with the BBC, CNN, Reuters, The New York Times, Axios and others describing the images as invoking dehumanizing tropes used against people of African descent and noting the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” played during the sequence [7] [1] [2] [8] [4] [9].
3. The White House response and competing narratives
Following bipartisan condemnation, the White House removed the post and said an unidentified staffer had “erroneously” shared the video to the president’s account, a claim reported by The Guardian and CNN that the administration used to distance the president from intent [3] [1]. White House spokespeople also framed the imagery as part of an internet meme portraying Trump as the “King of the Jungle,” a defense relayed by Newsweek and other outlets that sought to minimize the explicit racial content even as critics rejected that framing [5].
4. Bipartisan backlash and Republican dissension
The post drew unusually broad condemnation, including from prominent Republicans; Senator Tim Scott called it “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” and other senators publicly demanded its removal, demonstrating the political cost of circulating imagery tied to racist caricatures [7] [10]. Media accounts note that the scale and speed of the denunciations—across parties—helped drive the deletion [8] [11].
5. Context: history and precedent cited by reporting
News coverage placed the incident in a broader context of racist imagery historically used to dehumanize Black people and in a pattern of the president sharing provocative or AI-generated material targeting opponents, referencing past episodes such as earlier AI videos and past attacks on Obama like birtherism [2] [1] [8]. Outlets explicitly linked the ape imagery to centuries-old racist tropes used to justify slavery and segregation [4] [11].
6. What is established and what remains ambiguous
Reporting consistently establishes that the video was shared from Trump’s official account, included the Obamas-as-apes clip, and was deleted after backlash [1] [6] [2]. What is less settled in the public record and in these reports is who within the White House posted it and whether the president personally approved the repost before it went live—details the White House attributed to a staff error but did not fully document for the press [3] [5].
7. Bottom line conclusion
The factual record in mainstream reporting shows that President Trump’s official social media account posted and then removed a video that included an image portraying Barack and Michelle Obama as apes; the post was widely reported as racist and was removed after bipartisan outrage, while the White House’s explanation—that a staffer erroneously made the post—has been reported but not independently verified in the available sources [1] [2] [3].