It should come as no surprise that President Trump is racist and that he is insanely jealous of President Obama. Obama won the Nobel Prize, which is beyond Trump’s grasp. It rankles Trump that he can’t threaten or bribe the Nobel Prize committee. Trump can’t believe that there is one award that he can’t get no matter how hard he tries.

Trump has repeatedly demonstrated his racism, such as when he referred to African nations as “shithole countries.” He has made clear that he would welcome white immigrants, whether from South Africa or Scandinavia, as he expels immigrants of color. His vision of Make America Great Again seems to rely on depictions of a White America, a time preceding the Civil Rights movement. Norman Rockwell’s family has complained about the Trump administration’s misuse of Rockwell paintings to allude to an idyllic all-white America.

Trump’s spokesperson Karoline Leavitt was quick to denounce protests about the meme as “fake outage” and to urge journalists to focus on issues that “actually matter to the American public.” Like the Epstein files? Or the brutality of ICE?

Erica L. Green and Isabella Kwai wrote in The New York Times:

President Trump posted a blatantly racist video clip portraying former President Barack Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama as apes, the latest in a long pattern by Mr. Trump of promoting offensive stereotypes about Black Americans and others.

The brief clip, set to “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” was spliced near the end of a 62-second video that promoted conspiracy theories about anomalies in the 2020 presidential election.

The depiction of Mr. and Mrs. Obama as apes perpetuates a racist trope, used historically by slave traders and segregationists to dehumanize Black people and justify lynchings and other atrocities. A spokeswoman for Mr. Obama declined to comment.

Mr. Trump has a history of making degrading remarks about people of color, women and immigrants. And in his second administration, official posts from the White House, Labor Department and Homeland Security Department have posted images and slogans that echo white supremacist messaging.

In response to questions about the clip, which Mr. Trump posted Thursday during a late-night spree on social media, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said criticism of the video was “fake outrage.”

“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King,” she said. “Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”

Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina — the Senate’s only Black Republican — wrote on X that he hoped the post was fake “because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it.”

The latest clip appeared to have been taken from a video that was shared in October by a user on X with the caption “President Trump: King of the Jungle,” and an emoji of a lion.

In that video, several high-profile Democrats — including former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York, former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and former vice president Kamala Harris — were shown as various animals, while Mr. Trump was depicted as a lion. The Obamas, in the clip, were shown as apes. The video ended with the animals bowing down to Mr. Trump.