Karoline Leavitt’s attempt to depict President Donald Trump’s video showing Barack and Michelle Obama as apes as a “meme”, based on Disney classic ‘The Lion King’, has triggered a deluge of comments on social media criticizing the White House press secretary.
In a statement shared by the BBC and other news media, Leavitt said of the video, which has been bashed by both Democrats and Republicans as racist, was “an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King.”
But there are no apes in ‘The Lion King,’ political commentators and social media users were quick to point out—only a mandrill, Rafiki.
Why It Matters
Trump has been attacking the Obamas for years in a way that many have described as rooted in racism. Before being elected to his first term, Trump repeatedly spread false claims saying that Hawaii-born Barack Obama was in fact not born in the U.S. and should have been ineligible for president.
On this occasion, Trump claimed that he did not see the full content of the 62-second video he posted on social media this week, which depicted the Obamas as apes under the notes of ‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight.’
While the video has since been removed from the president’s social media profile amid bipartisan outrage, the president has refused to apologize, saying he did not make a mistake. Asked if he condemned the racist part of the video, he said: “Of course I do.”
But this is hardly the first time the president has been accused of racist behavior. The Trump administration has been accused of discrimination and bigotry amid its rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs since the president’s return to the White House.
The backlash on this particular video is also unlikely to convince the Trump administration to curb its growing use of AI-generated imagery to boast about its anti-immigration efforts and attack political opponents.
What To Know
The video was posted on Trump’s Truth Social account at 11:44 p.m. ET on Thursday night, allegedly by a staffer and not by the president himself. Most of the clip appeared to be drawn from a conservative video that falsely alleges deliberate tampering with voting machines in battleground states during the 2020 presidential vote count.
A longer version of the video was first published by conservative meme creator Xerias in October on his X account. In it, Trump appears as the King of the Jungle while former president Joe Biden is shown as an ape eating a banana.
While the video posted on Thursday has been bashed by both Democrats and Republicans, key figures in the Trump administration have defended it, including Leavitt.
In a statement shared with news media, Leavitt called for journalists to “please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
But her claim that the video, which tapped into a long and ugly history of representing Black people as primates in racist caricatures, was a meme based on ‘The Lion King’ has rubbed people on social media the wrong way.
“But there are no gorillas in The Lion King,” Huffington Post’s deputy editor Philip Lewis wrote on X.
“I said there are no apes in The Lion King, and these dumbass MAGAs are posting photos with monkeys in the comments trying to prove me wrong,” progressive commentator Alex Cole wrote on the social media platform, commenting on images showing monkeys in the Disney film which are not primates.
“These people are inherently stupid. They literally don’t know the difference.”
Journalist Jake Tapper said live on CNN: “There are no apes in The Lion King. For those wondering, Rafiki is a mandrill.”
What People Are Saying
Trump told reporters while aboard Air Force One on Friday of the video: “I guess during the end of it, there was some kind of picture people don’t like. I wouldn’t like it either, but I didn’t see it. I just, I looked at the first part, and it was really about voter fraud.”
He added: “We took it down as soon as we found out about it.”
Republican Senator Tim Scott, who is black, described the video as “the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House” in a statement shared by BBC.
John Curtis, a Republican Senator from Utah, wrote on social media that the video was “blatantly racist and inexcusable.”
The office of California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote on X about the video shared by Trump: “Disgusting behaviour by the president. Every single Republican must denounce this. Now.”
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker wrote on X: “Donald Trump is a racist.”
What Happens Next
The Obamas are yet to comment on the video. Their first public comment since the incident has been to wish the U.S. team good luck at the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, which kicked off in Italy on Friday.
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