US: Trump posts video on Truth Social depicting the Obamas as monkeys

Brussels, 6 February (LaPresse) – Controversy has erupted over a video posted on US President Donald Trump’s Truth Social account, which shows former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama depicted as monkeys towards the end. At the end of the approximately one-minute video – which discusses voting devices and electoral fraud – the Obamas’ faces appear on the bodies of monkeys for about one second, surrounded by a forest, while The Tokens’ song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” plays. Among the first to react was the office of California Governor Gavin Newsom, a potential Democratic candidate for the 2028 presidential election and a well-known opponent of Trump. “Disgusting behaviour by the President. Every single Republican must denounce him. Now,” wrote Newsom’s press office account on X. Ben Rhodes, former national security adviser and close confidant of Barack Obama, also condemned the images. ‘May Trump and his racist followers be haunted by the fact that future Americans will welcome the Obamas as beloved figures, while studying him as a stain on our history,’ he wrote on X.