Days after his Truth Social post portraying the Obamas as apes drew widespread condemnation, President Donald Trump reposted several videos featuring himself with a number of prominent Black Americans.
On Wednesday morning, the Republican president shared a video montage of photos showing him alongside civil rights leaders Jesse Jackson, Rosa Parks, and Al Sharpton; musicians Michael Jackson, P. Diddy, 50 Cent, and Snoop Dogg; boxers Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali; and TV figures Oprah Winfrey, Omarosa Manigault Newman and Will Smith.
It was captioned “A timeline of Trump’s bigotry.”
“How quickly people forget,” Trump wrote. “So sad!”
The 79-year-old president also shared three additional videos highlighting his apparent friendship, charity and loyalty toward high-profile Black figures.
One video opens with the line, “No one realized that 30 years ago, Donald Trump saved Mike Tyson’s life.” The clip — featuring photos of the boxer and the former real estate mogul together — claims Trump, acting as Tyson’s manager, plucked him from obscurity and brought him worldwide fame.
Tyson, who supported Trump in 2016, previously rebuffed this claim in an interview with The Daily Caller.
“We’re really good friends. We go back to ’86, ’87,” the heavyweight champion said. “Most of my successful and best fights were at Trump’s hotels. He didn’t manage me, though. He was just helping me with my court case.” Tyson stood trial for rape in 1992. He was found guilty and served three years in prison.
Another video shared by the president states: “If there was one person Donald Trump stayed loyal to it was Michael Jackson.” The video features old interviews from Trump, during which he said he didn’t believe the accusations of child molestation levied at the “Thriller” singer.
A jury found Jackson not guilty of child molestation charges in 2005, following a lengthy and high-profile criminal trial. The president defended Jackson as recently as 2015, when he tweeted that “Michael was very misunderstood - a great talent.”
Trump also reposted a clip of his infamous 1988 appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show, during which he discussed running for president. The caption states: “Oprah wanted Donald Trump to run for president in 1988 on the same exact policies he holds today.”
Over the years, Winfrey has endorsed a number of Democrats for president, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris. And, in 2024, she told a Harris campaign audience: “If we don’t show up tomorrow, it is entirely possible that we will not have the opportunity to cast a ballot again.”
Trump’s flurry of reposts comes six days after he shared a video on Truth Social in which Barack and Michelle Obama’s faces were superimposed onto apes in a jungle. The clip, which was tacked onto to the tail-end of another video, triggered bipartisan criticism.
Senator Tim Scott, a South Carolina Republican and close ally of Trump’s, was one of a number of GOP officials to accuse the president of crossing the line.
“Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House,” Scott wrote on X. “The President should remove it.”
“Donald Trump had the racist, bigoted audacity to post an AI-generated video depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes,” Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat, wrote on X. “While his behavior is not shocking, it is certainly disgusting and disturbing.”
On Friday morning, hours after the video was posted, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed the clip as harmless. In a statement to The Independent, she said, “This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King.”
“Please stop the fake outrage,” she added.
But as criticism mounted, the White House seemed to shift its stance. An official later told The Independent that a staff member — not Trump himself — had “erroneously made the post.” The video was deleted from the president’s Truth Social account after about 12 hours.
The White House did not respond to a request from The Independent asking for the name of the staffer who made the post.
During a press gaggle on Friday, Trump refused to apologize for the post, insisting he is “the least racist president you’ve had in a long time” and blaming a staffer for the oversight.
“I looked at it. I saw it, and I just looked at the first part. It was about voter fraud,” Trump said. “I guess during the end of it, there was some kind of picture that people don’t like, I wouldn’t like it either, but I didn’t see it. I just looked at the first part, and it was really about voter fraud in the machines, how crooked it is, how disgusting it is.”
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