US President Donald Trump started an immediate and widespread condemnation early Friday, February 6, after he posted a video on his Truth Social Platform.
The video depicts former US President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as monkeys.
The one-minute video, which propagates the false conspiracy theory that polling firm Dominion Voting Systems helped steal the election, ends with a two-second clip of the Obama family’s smiling faces morphing into the faces of monkeys dancing to the music.
The company, Dominion, has reportedly settled a $787.5 million defamation suit against the news organization Fox News.
The post was part of more than 60 posts from a social media event that Trump posted overnight.
Before it was met with public backlash, it was loved a thousand times over by Trump’s supporters.
Several American politicians and media personalities condemned Trump’s behavior.
Office of California Governor Gavin Newsom stated: “Charitable behavior, every single Republican must condemn this. Now.”
Political strategist Adam Parkhomenko wrote: “This is blatant racism. Period … That’s who he is.”
The incident is bringing blatantly racist imagery back to the center of US political discourse, sparking outrage over its targeting of the country’s first black First Family. Trump’s prodigious social media session also featured retweeted lies about the 2020 election, as well as his proposal to add his likeness to Mount Rushmore.
