President Donald Trump, the worst racist to hold the office of president in modern times, posted a video on Truth Social overnight that included a meme depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys. After initially defending the image, the White House has since removed it, blaming it on a staff member, in typical Trumpian fashion.

The image was part of a flood of posts on Truth Social on Thursday night that ran into Friday morning. One of the videos begins with a discussion about voting machines but ends with a seemingly random image of President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama with monkey bodies.

When asked about the image by several news outlets Friday morning, the White House initially tried to act like it was no big deal.

“This is from an internet meme video that depicts President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from (T)he Lion King,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to Axios.

Leavitt tried to play it off as a distraction from the real issues, telling the Wall Street Journal: “Please stop the fake outrage and report something today that matters to the American public.”

But even some Trump allies seemed shocked by the image, including Sen. Tim Scott, a Republican from South Carolina, who WRITES in X:”Praying it’s fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve ever seen come out of this White House. The President should remove it.” Scott called it “extremely racist” as if to acknowledge that Trump regularly posts racist garbage. This just happened to be the most racist example, in his view.

Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine, echoed Scott’s sentiments, writing“Tim is right. It’s horrible.”

Tim is right. It’s terrible. https://t.co/9LbpP9JxbN

— Sen. Susan Collins (@SenatorCollins) February 6, 2026

Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican from New York, was also unhappy with the image of the Obamas, writing: “The President’s post is wrong and extremely offensive — whether intentional or not — and should be removed immediately with an apology.”

Sen. Pete Ricketts, a Republican from Nebraska, also joined X, writing: “Even if it’s a Lion King meme, a reasonable person would see its racist context. The White House should do what anyone would do when they make a mistake: own up to it and apologize.

Sen. Roger Wicker, a Republican from Mississippi also criticized the racist meme, writing“This is completely unacceptable. The president should remove it and apologize.

The president’s Truth Social account took it down around noon ET on Friday and told CNN Alayna Treene: “A White House staffer made the post by mistake. It has been removed.” That charge was in stark contrast to statements made by the White House just hours earlier.

Some users on the right side of X said that any outrage was a “hoax” because the image of the Obamas appeared to be included as a result of a screen recording that auto-scrolled a new video. But that means there are two options: It’s meant to be included as a wink and a nod to Trump’s most racist supporters. Or it was accidentally included, and Trump had no control or knowledge of the videos being distributed on his own social media accounts. The fact that his White House initially defended the video suggests that even if it was an accident, they are willing to accept the message behind it.

Trump has shown himself to be the most openly racist president since at least Woodrow Wilson, repeatedly calling Somali-Americans “trash” and saying they should return to their own country. That racism is one of the reasons the federal government recently invaded Minnesota, terrorizing its citizens in a campaign of revenge against anyone who is not white.

But Republicans did not condemn Trump’s racist complaints against the Somali community. In fact, Rep. Tom Emmer, a Republican from Minnesota, doubled down on Trump’s racism. For whatever reason, the overnight post portraying the Obamas as monkeys was a step too far for Republicans like Lawler and Scott, which is almost certainly the reason the video was removed.

Trump’s government is also constantly spreading unbelievably racist and fascist content on social media, even DHS sharing a popular song Nazi creators or Border Patrol sharing a video with anti-semitic slurs in summer. Each time, Trump’s minions defend the posts very well, but sometimes they get deleted under pressure.

Now, Trump is doubling down on the pressure, proving he can back down if people get angry. Unfortunately, it’s a given that he’ll post something more racist again in the near future. The only question is whether the people (or the right people in the form of Republicans) will be angry enough for him to pull it off.

Updated with tweets from Sen. Pete Ricketts and Sen. Roger Wicker.