White House 'staffer error' behind racist video shared by Trump showing Obamas' faces on bodies of monkeys

The US President shared the clip on his social media account which featured the faces of Mr and Mrs Obama on the bodies of the apes.

When their faces come into shot, the song 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight' can be heard playing in the background.

The 62-second video was one of numerous clips shared by the President to amplify his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

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Trump's PR team has since claimed that the video was shared in error by a member of staff, despite it being up for 12 hours and being "liked" thousands of times.

But the video's removal comes after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt rejected criticism of the post that depicted the Obamas, and claimed it was a Lion King reference.

Ms Leavitt 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 and report on something today that actually matters to the American public."

A senior White House official told CNN: "A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down."

At the 60-second mark of the clip comes 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, which shows Mr Trump as "King of the Jungle" and depicts a range of Democratic leaders as animals, including Joe Biden, as a primate eating a banana.

Republican Senator Tim Scott, who is black, was another who criticised Mr Trump's post.

Mr Scott who chairs Senate Republicans' mid-term campaign arm, said on social media: "Praying it was fake because it's the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House."

Ben Rhodes, a close confidant of President Obama and former deputy national security adviser, wrote in response: "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."

The Republicans Against Trump group also criticised the post and its "racist image".

Trump has a long history of intensely personal criticism of the Obamas and of using incendiary, sometimes racist, rhetoric.

In his 2024 campaign, he said immigrants were "poisoning the blood of our country", language similar to what Adolf Hitler said to dehumanise Jews in Nazi Germany.