Featured Image Credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Topics: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Politics, US News
Ben Williams
Topics: Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Politics, US News
Barack Obama has addressed the controversy surrounding an AI-generated video shared by Donald Trump, which depicted him and Michelle Obama as apes.
The clip, which appeared on Trump’s Truth Social account in February this year, prompted outrage online after viewers spotted the racist imagery at the end of a longer video making baseless claims about voter fraud.
Trump previously defended the upload, insisting the video was mainly about 'voter fraud' and calling it a 'strong piece', while White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed criticism as 'fake outrage'.
The post came after years of hostility between Trump and Obama, with the current US president having previously shared a fake video of his predecessor being arrested.
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Now, in a wide-ranging interview with The New Yorker, Obama has responded to the video, making it clear that while he does not take attacks on himself personally, his family is another matter entirely.
Obama told the publication: “I don’t take it personally,” adding: “I mean, I’m always offended when my wife and kids get dragged into things, because they didn’t choose this. . . . That’s a line that even people whose politics I deeply reject, I would expect them to care about. I would never talk about somebody’s family in that way.”
The AI clip in question showed the former president and former First Lady with their faces superimposed onto the bodies of apes, while The Tokens song The Lion Sleeps Tonight (widely known for its playing in The Lion King) played in the background.
It was widely condemned at the time, with California governor Gavin Newsom writing on X (formerly Twitter): “Every single Republican must denounce this. Now.”
Ben Rhodes, who served as Obama’s deputy national-security adviser, also hit out at the post, saying: “Let it haunt Trump and his racist followers that future Americans will embrace the Obamas as beloved figures while studying him as a stain on our history.”
Despite the backlash, Trump refused to explicitly apologise for the nature of the clip.
Speaking at an Oval Office press conference in February, he said: “That was a video on, as you know, voter fraud. A fairly long video that had a little piece that had to do with 'The Lion King'.”
He added: “It's doing very well, it's being shown all over the place. Long before that was posted. That was a very strong - I'm sure you saw it - piece on voter fraud.
“The piece that you’re talking about was all over the place, many times, I believe, for years.”
Leavitt also defended the video at the time, telling Tyla: “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King.
“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
In the New Yorker interview, Obama also said he was more concerned by AI-generated videos Trump had posted, which treat war ‘like a video game’ and show ‘excrement dumped on ordinary citizens’.
He added: ‘I mean, I’m a fair target in the sense of, yeah, you can feel free to pick on me, because I’m your own size.’