Trump Deletes Video with Obamas as Apes
Amid Outcry on Racist Messaging for Base
Capitol Inside
February 6, 2026
President Donald Trump gave the Democrats in Texas and other states another round of potent ammunition to use against the Republicans in the 2026 midterm vote when he posted a video on Thursday night that shows how voting machines are rigged and depicts Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.
The American president spliced the photoshopped image of the Obamas into a 60-second clip that features a demonstration on how the election was stolen when Democrat Joe Biden ousted from the White House in 2020. The shot of the nation's first Black president and first lady pops on to the screen for a second or less near the end of the instructional video on the tricks that it suggests Democrats in swing states used to pull off the electoral heist that Trump alleged without any supporting evidence.
“Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” U.S. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina said in a social media post on Friday. “The President should remove it.”
Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt scoffed at a hurricane of hostility and criticism that the president triggered with the video that shows the Obamas faces on costumes that could have been used for chimpanzees or gorillas with the jungle as a backdrop and the song "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" as the score.
“Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public,” Leavitt told reporters on Friday.
The president's spokesperson didn't address the shock, disgust and accusations of blatant racism that Democrats and Republicans served up in the fallout from the video. But the post was removed from Trump's Truth Social page less than 20 minutes after the Wall Street Journal included a link to it.
Scott is a Black Republican who Trump considered for the role of vice-president before tapping Vice-President JD Vance to be his running mate for the 2024 election instead. But Texas Republican leaders and lawmakers who are almost all white may choose to stay mum on Trump's portrayal of the nation's former first couple as primates based on their history of going along with the current president to avoid his wrath.
But the Republicans in the Lone Star State can expect the depiction of the Obamas as apes to fuel a growing backlash to the president that's was evident in the loss of a Texas Senate seat to the Democrats last weekend in a deep-red district that's voted more like the state as a whole than any other.
Republican Leigh Wambsganss parroted Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick's assertion that Democrat Taylor Rehmet won the Senate District 9 race as a consequence of a low turnout in an unpredictable special election. But the turnout for the special SD 9 runoff in Tarrant County was actually higher than it had been in any overtime election in a special Senate contest in Texas than it had been in 25 years or longer in the nation's largest red state.
The SD 9 contest that Rehmet won by 14 points in a district where Trump beat Democrat Kamala Harris by 17 featured the highest turnout for a special Texas Senate vote ion that wasn't held on the same day as a presidential election in the Lone Star State. An analysis of the SD 9 runoff vote shows that the 31-point swing there was powered in large part by a dramatic shift of allegiance by voters in Hispanic areas where Trump ran strong in 2024.
The OT vote in the Tarrant Senate district was the latest example of how Democrats fare best when turnout is high.
The outrage that Leavitt characterized as phony continued to sizzle and grow despite the deleting of the apes video post. U.S. Rep. Mike Lawler, a New York Republicans, decired the president's post as "wrong and incrediblity offensive" and said Trump owed the nation an apology for it.
California's Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom said the video was an act of "disgusting behavior" for a U.S. president. "Every single Republican must immediately denounce Donald Trump’s disgusting bigotry,” Newsom contended.
The WSJ reported that the post with the Obamas pictures was one of more than 30 messages that Trump put up late Thursday night and Friday morning with greivances about the election he lost and attempts to play down his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.
more to come ...
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