Topics: Donald Trump, US News, Politics, Barack Obama, Michelle Obama
Warning: This article contains discussion of racial discrimination which some readers may find distressing.
Weeks after sharing a video online depicting former president Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as monkeys, Donald Trump has doubled down on his claim that the post is not 'racist'.
The minute-long video was shared by the US President on Truth Social on 6 February, beginning with the repetition of several long-standing false allegations against the Democrats, including that they swung the 2020 presidential election in favour of Joe Biden using Dominion Voting Systems.
Later on in the clip, a bizarre, AI-generated image suddenly emerges, showing the faces of Trump's presidential predecessor Barack Obama and former First Lady, Michelle Obama superimposed onto the bodies of apes. The Disney track 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' plays in the background.
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Unsurprisingly, the clip rapidly accumulated much criticism - including from a number of Trump's political opponents, like California governor, Gavin Newsom, who slammed it as 'disgusting behaviour'.
"Every single Republican must denounce this," he wrote in a passionate X post. "Now."
Ben Rhodes, an ex-Deputy National Security adviser, also chimed in: "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, however, hosting an Oval Office press conference on Thursday (12 Feb), Trump continued to defend the upload, claiming it hinged predominantly 'on voter fraud', and was a 'strong piece'.
The right-wing leader also claimed the controversial clip of the Obamas has been 'all over the place for years', and admitted to not yet having fired the White House employee responsible for 'erroneously' creating the full post.
"That was a video on, as you know, voter fraud," the politician insisted. "A fairly long video that had a little piece that had to do with 'The Lion King'.
"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."
Trump once again refused to apologise explicitly for the nature of the video.
His outlandish comments come after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also attempted to defend the video.
"This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King," she told Tyla.
"Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public."
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