Trump shares video with racist clip depicting Obamas as apes

US President Donald Trump has shared a video on social media which included a racist clip depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.

The clip - set to the song "the Lion Sleeps Tonight" - was at the end of a 62-second video containing claims about voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

Republican Senator Tim Scott - who is black - called for the president to remove the post, describing it as "the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House".

The White House defended the clip as an "internet meme video" and told critics to "stop the fake outrage".

The clip - which is reminiscent of racist caricatures comparing black people to monkeys - appears to be taken from an X post shared by conservative meme creator Xerias in October.

That video also depicts several other high-profile Democrats as animals, including New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Trump's predecessor in the White House, Joe Biden, was also depicted as an ape eating a banana.

While the president offered no comment in his post, his sharing of the video - one of dozens posted on his Truth Social account overnight - sparked a fierce backlash.

"Disgusting behaviour by the president," the office of California Governor Gavin Newsom wrote on X. "Every single Republican must denounce this. Now."

Ben Rhodes, a former deputy national security adviser for strategic communications in the Obama White House, said: "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 country."

In a statement sent to the BBC, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the clip 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 and report on something today that actually matters to the American public," she added.

Senator Scott, a black South Carolina Republican and an ally of Trump, posted that he was "praying it was fake because it's the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House".

"The President should remove it," he added.

The clip of the Obamas was added to the end of a minute-long video which included claims about a voting conspiracy in Michigan in the 2020 presidential election. Those claims were debunked as part of Dominion Voting System's successful civil legal actions against some media companies.