President Donald Trump shared a 62-second video on Truth Social focused almost entirely on claims of fraud in the 2020 election, with critics latching onto a fleeting animation that appears for just a couple of seconds at the tail end of the clip.
The video centers on Trump’s long-running argument that the 2020 race was rigged. In the final moments, an animated frame flashes, showing former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama with their faces on cartoon primate bodies—a brief visual that is consistent with the fast-moving meme format common on Instagram Reels, where one clip transitions into the next.
The abrupt cut suggests the image was not the focus of the post but part of a recycled meme sequence, with the transition to the next clip clearly visible at the end of the video.
Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina criticized the video after it circulated, posting a melodramatic message.
“Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it,” Scott, who is falling out of favor with the GOP base, said on X.
The White House pushed back on the backlash, saying the outrage was misplaced and ignored the broader context of the video.
“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,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement to NewsNation.
Supporters of the president noted the clip was plainly about the 2020 election and that the disputed animation appeared for only a blink-and-you-miss-it moment as the video rolled into another meme, a common feature of short-form social media content.
The post also landed amid renewed scrutiny of the 2020 election, with the Department of Justice recently seizing voting rolls from a Fulton County, Georgia, election office and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s office reportedly examining voting machines used in Puerto Rico.
