A video shared on US President Donald Trump's social media account that depicted Democratic former president Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as primates has been deleted following criticism that the post evoked racist imagery long used to dehumanise people of African descent.
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"A White House staffer erroneously made the post," said a White House official, who declined to be named.
"It has been taken down."
The statement came hours after White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt described as "fake outrage" a wave of negative reactions to the video, including from several prominent Republican lawmakers.
Late on Thursday, Trump had shared a 62-second clip amplifying the Republican US president's assertions that his 2020 election defeat was the result of fraud.
Nearly all of the video, which was among dozens of Truth Social posts from Trump overnight, appears to be from a conservative video alleging deliberate tampering with voting machines in battleground states as the 2020 presidential votes were tallied.
At the 60-second mark is a quick scene of two primates, with the Obamas' smiling faces imposed on them.
Those frames were taken from a longer video, previously circulated by an influential conservative meme maker.
It shows Trump as "King of the Jungle" and depicts a range of Democratic leaders as animals, including Joe Biden, who is white, as a primate eating a banana.
The post on Trump's Truth Social network drew swift criticism from prominent political figures, including African-American Republican senator Tim Scott.
"Praying it was fake because it's the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House," Scott said on X.
"The President should remove it."
Republican Representative Mike Lawler of New York was among several other prominent political figures who said Trump should apologise and delete the post.
Prior to the post being deleted, Leavitt said it was "from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King".
A spokesperson for the Obamas declined to comment.
White supremacists have for centuries depicted people of African ancestry as monkeys as part of campaigns to dehumanise and dominate black populations.
"Let it haunt Trump and his racist followers that future Americans will embrace the Obamas as beloved figures while studying him as a stain on our history," said Ben Rhodes, a former Obama aide, on X.
"Donald Trump's video is blatantly racist, disgusting, and utterly despicable," said Derrick Johnson, national president of the NAACP, a civil rights group, in an emailed statement.
"Voters are watching and will remember this at the ballot box."
Trump and the official White House social media accounts frequently repost memes and artificial intelligence-generated videos.
As Leavitt did on Friday, Trump's aides typically dismiss critiques and cast the images as humorous.
with AP
Australian Associated Press
