Trump Posts AI Video Depicting Obamas as Apes, Draws Condemnation

President Donald Trump shared a video on his Truth Social platform late Thursday night that included an AI-generated clip depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama with their faces superimposed on ape bodies, drawing widespread condemnation for its racist imagery.

The 62-second video, posted around 11:44 p.m. ET, primarily advances unsubstantiated claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election, alleging that voting machines in battleground states were manipulated to benefit Joe Biden. Toward the end, for about two seconds, the Obamas appear dancing in a jungle setting with ape bodies, accompanied by the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" by The Tokens. The clip carries a watermark from the X account "xerias_x," a pro-Trump profile that previously created similar AI content shared by Trump, including a video from October 2025 portraying him as a lion and various Democrats as other animals from "The Lion King," such as Biden as a baboon and Kamala Harris as a tortoise.

As of Friday morning, the post remained available on Trump's account and had garnered several thousand likes. It is unclear whether Trump personally reviewed the video before...