Donald Trump relayed, on Thursday, on his Truth Social network a conspiracy video on the 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden and in which the Obama couple is represented as monkeys. After numerous condemnations, the White House spoke of an “error” after denouncing “false indignation”.
Published on: 02/06/2026 - 4:04 p.m. Modified on: 02/06/2026 - 6:57 p.m.
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A new limit crossed, before turning back. Former American President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle are represented as monkeys in a conspiracy video montage, posted Thursday, February 5, by President Donald Trump on his Truth Social network, and dedicated to the 2020 presidential election. After a dozen hours online, it ended up being unpublished.
“A White House employee had published this content by mistake. It was deleted,” a senior executive official told AFP, after the editing in question sparked a wave of condemnations even in the Republican Party, that of the American president.
A reaction in contradiction with that of White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, who initially denounced a "false indignation", without mentioning an erroneous broadcast, explaining that the video represented "President Trump as king of the jungle, and the Democrats as characters from the Lion King".
The video in question, a little over a minute long, presented supposed evidence of manipulation during the 2020 election, which the Republican president claims to have won. Donald Trump claims to have been robbed of victory by Democrat Joe Biden.
The montage was originally posted by the American far-right website Patriot News Outlet, and reposted twice by Donald Trump.
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It repeats allegations, which have never been proven, according to which the counting company Dominion Voting Systems helped to steal the vote results from Donald Trump in a number of key states.
Just before the end of the post, for two seconds, a video montage of the Obama couple appears, their hilarious faces on a primate body, the jungle in the background.
As of Friday morning, the video had already received several thousand likes on Truth Social. The White House, for its part, denounced “false indignation”.
“Despicable behavior on the part of the president”
The office of California Governor Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential candidate and one of the fiercest critics of the current administration, blasted the publication.
"Despicable behavior by the president. Every Republican must denounce this. Now," tweeted his press service account on
Ben Rhodes, former senior national security adviser and close friend of Barack Obama, also protested.
“May it haunt Trump and his racist supporters, knowing that Americans of tomorrow will cherish the Obamas as beloved figures, while studying Trump as a stain on our history,” he also wrote on X.
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During the first year of his second term in the White House, Donald Trump intensified his use of hyper-realistic but fabricated visuals, on Truth Social and other platforms, to glorify himself or ridicule his detractors.
The American president does not hide his animosity for Barack Obama. Last year, he released an AI-generated video showing the first black president in US history arrested in the Oval Office and then appearing behind bars in an orange prison jumpsuit.
Later, he posted a clip of House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries – also black – wearing a fake mustache and sombrero. The parliamentarian, who at the time denounced a racist message, described Donald Trump on Friday as a “pernicious, despicable and deranged scavenger”. He also called on Republicans to “denounce the disgusting intolerance” of their leader.
In the conservative camp, where criticism of the American president is generally non-existent or very muted, Senator Tim Scott asked Donald Trump to “remove” the video. “I pray this is false, because this is the most racist thing I have seen come out of this White House,” the only black Republican senator wrote on X.
South Africa and Somalia, Trump's favorite targets
The Trump administration is waging an open fight against initiatives it says are linked to woke ideology, a term used pejoratively by conservatives to denounce what they perceive as an excess of activism in favor of minorities.
The head of state is on a crusade against illegal immigration and regularly denigrates minorities, playing on the fears of a segment of his white electorate of losing their political and cultural power.
His administration also regularly pays tribute to the Confederate States of America, defenders of slavery who fell during the Civil War (1861-1865).
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Abroad, Donald Trump has also made South Africa one of his favorite targets, denouncing racial discrimination which, according to him, targets the white minority descended from the first European settlers. The American president says that white farmers are victims of a “genocide”.
Nationals of sub-Saharan African countries are also regularly annoyed by his comments.
In Somalia, "they have nothing, they only kill each other", he said in December. "Their country is worthless for one reason or another. Their country is rotten and we don't want them here."
With AFP
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