{"id":2232,"date":"2026-05-07T03:49:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T03:49:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/?p=2232"},"modified":"2026-05-07T03:49:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T03:49:12","slug":"barack-obama-finally-breaks-silence-over-donald-trump-posting-ai-ape-video-of-him-michelle-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/?p=2232","title":{"rendered":"Barack Obama finally breaks silence over Donald Trump posting AI ape video of him & Michelle"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Barack Obama has addressed the backlash after president Trump defended the controversial AI clip<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Obama has addressed the controversy surrounding an AI-generated video shared by president Donald Trump, which depicted him and Michelle Obama as apes.<\/p>\n

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The clip, which appeared on Truth Social account of Trump in February this year, prompted outrage online after viewers spotted the racist imagery at the end of a longer video making baseless claims about voter fraud.<\/p>\n

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Trump previously defended the upload, insisting the video was mainly about \u2018voter fraud\u2019 and calling it a \u2018strong piece\u2019, while White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed criticism as \u2018fake outrage\u2019.<\/p>\n

The post came after years of hostility between Trump and Obama, with the current US president having previously shared a fake video of his predecessor being arrested.<\/p>\n

Now, in a wide-ranging interview with The New Yorker, Obama has responded to the video, making it clear that while he does not take attacks on himself personally, his family is another matter entirely.<\/p>\n

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Obama said to the publication: \u201cI don\u2019t take it personally,\u201d adding: \u201cI mean, I\u2019m always offended when my wife and kids get dragged into things, because they didn\u2019t choose this. . . . That\u2019s a line that even people whose politics I deeply reject, I would expect them to care about. I would never talk about somebody\u2019s family in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The AI clip in question showed the former president and former First Lady with their faces superimposed onto the bodies of apes, while The Tokens song The Lion Sleeps Tonight (widely known for its playing in The Lion King) played in the background.<\/p>\n

It was widely condemned at the time, with California governor Gavin Newsom writing on X (formerly Twitter): \u201cEvery single Republican must denounce this. Now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ben Rhodes, who served as Obama\u2019s deputy national-security adviser, also hit out at the post, saying: \u201cLet 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In spite of the backlash, Trump refused to explicitly apologise for the nature of the clip.<\/p>\n

Sharing at an Oval Office press conference in February, he said: \u201cThat was a video on, as you know, voter fraud. A fairly long video that had a little piece that had to do with \u2018The Lion King\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cIt\u2019s doing very well, it\u2019s being shown all over the place. Long before that was posted. That was a very strong \u2013 I\u2019m sure you saw it \u2013 piece on voter fraud.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe piece that you\u2019re talking about was all over the place, many times, I believe, for years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Additionally, Leavitt defended the video at the time, telling Tyla: \u201cThis is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King.<\/p>\n

\u201cPlease stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.\u201d<\/p>\n

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In an interview with the New Yorker, Obama also said he was more concerned by AI-generated videos Trump had posted, which treat war \u2018like a video game\u2019 and show \u2018excrement dumped on ordinary citizens\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018I mean, I\u2019m a fair target in the sense of, yeah, you can feel free to pick on me, because I\u2019m your own size.\u2019, he added.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barack Obama has addressed the backlash after president Trump defended the controversial AI clip Obama has addressed the controversy surrounding an AI-generated video shared by president Donald Trump, which depicted … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2233,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2232"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2232\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2234,"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2232\/revisions\/2234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storylifedaily.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}