GOP Breaks With Trump White House Over Offensive Post as Criticism Mounts

President Donald Trump’s Truth Social account has once again become the center of political firestorm. This time, over a post that thrust a short but widely condemned clip of former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama into the spotlight.

Late Thursday, Trump shared a roughly one-minute video on Truth Social promoting debunked 2020 election claims. The backlash centered on a brief AI-generated segment depicting the Obamas’ faces superimposed onto animated apes in a jungle scene set to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” The post was removed Friday morning as bipartisan criticism mounted.

Republican condemnation of the video, rare in its intensity, began quickly the next morning, signaling discomfort among Trump’s own party.

South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate and a former Trump ally, took to X (formerly Twitter) to denounce the post.

Scott’s comments were echoed by others across the GOP spectrum. Nebraska Senator Pete Ricketts said that even if the content originated as a joke or parody, “a reasonable person sees the racist context to this,” and that the White House should “remove this and apologize.”

New York Republican Representative Mike Lawler, who is facing a competitive re-election bid, was equally frank, calling the Truth Social post “wrong and incredibly offensive” and urging an apology from Trump.

Additional Republican voices joined the chorus. Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker described the imagery as “totally unacceptable,” and Maine Senator Susan Collins tweeted her agreement with Scott, labeling the incident “appalling.” Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama said the post “should have never been posted to begin with, and is not who we are as a nation.”

At the same time, a few Republicans offered more measured remarks. Representative John James of Michigan, who defended the president against claims of racism, nevertheless said he was “shocked and appalled” by the post and was “glad to see that trash has been taken down.”

The White House initially defended the video before its removal, characterizing it as part of an “internet meme video” meant to depict Trump as “King of the Jungle” and Democrats as characters from The Lion King. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed criticism as “fake outrage” and urged reporters to focus on more substantive issues.

By midday Friday, however, the video from Trump’s Truth Social account had been deleted.

A White House official later told reporters that the controversial segment was “erroneously” posted by a staffer. Trump himself, when asked later, claimed he had only seen the start of the video and again denied responsibility for the full clip.

Democrats were swift to frame the episode as part of a larger pattern of racially insensitive content tied to Trump’s online presence. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries called on Republicans to denounce “disgusting bigotry,” while California Governor Gavin Newsom posted on X that the video was “disgusting behavior by the President” and urged every Republican lawmaker to condemn it.

Civil rights groups also weighed in. The NAACP and others described the imagery as offensive and dehumanizing, invoking historical tropes used against Black Americans. Critics noted the heightened sensitivity given that the incident occurred during Black History Month.

Featured image via X screengrab