Republicans rarely criticize Trump in his second term. A racist post briefly changed that

[Dulcinea]

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump received rare blowback from Republican lawmakers over a video posted to social media that included a racist image of former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, depicted as primates.

Since Trump’s return to the White House, Republican lawmakers have treaded carefully when disagreeing with the president, often communicating their concerns in private for fear of suffering his wrath.

But the swift calls to remove the post, which also echoed false conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, represented a rare moment of bipartisan backlash to Trump’s actions from lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

Multiple GOP members of the Senate and House joined their Democratic colleagues in voicing disgust and criticism at the post and urged the president to remove it. Trump declined to apologize, saying he did not see the racist portion of the video when he passed it on to staff.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-obama-racist-video-tim-scott-067cf84eea0ec4a03122d6a245ce5714

[Lovie777]

1. magas are collecting a list of GQP who are criticizing shithole...............

Republicans live in fear.

Enough.

[Skittles]

2. cowards live in fear

FUCK THEM

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. Trump defends racist Obama video as 'very strong' documentation of key campaign claim

trump is truly mentally ill. This video was a pure racist attack on the Obamas and had nothing to do with voter fraudl

Donald Trump has excused the sharing of a racist video featuring Barack and Michelle Obama to his Truth Social account as it actually details voter fraud.

— Raw Story (@rawstory.com) 2026-02-13T15:05:59.657Z

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-obama-2675265609/

Donald Trump has excused the sharing of a racist video featuring Barack and Michelle Obama to his Truth Social account as it actually details voter fraud.

The president has erroneously claimed for years that the 2020 elections were rigged. His second term in the White House has led to some pressure on mail-in ballots and the repetition of claims that the Democratic Party did not win the 2020 election. Trump's post to Truth Social last week was criticized by politicians, though the president has tried to explain why the video had been shared, The Daily Beast reported.

He told reporters on Thursday, "That was a video on, as you know, on voter fraud. It was a fairly long video, and they had a little piece and it had to do with the Lion King. It’s doing very well, uh, it’s been shown all over the place, long before that was posted.

"But that was a very strong - and I’m sure you saw it - a very strong piece on voter fraud, and the piece we were talking about was all over the place, many times I believe, for years."

The video was shared to Trump's Truth Social account at around midnight on February 6, with the current president sharing a host of posts, including this video. Said video runs for one minute and two seconds, with the final seconds of the video depicting Barack and Michelle as animals.

Trump had previously targeted Obama with an artificially generated video of the former president being arrested in the Oval Office. The deepfake video appeared in July last year on the president's Truth Social account.