Did Donald Trump really post a video on Truth Social featuring the faces of Michelle and Barack Obama superimposed on the bodies of apes? Yes, that is true: Shortly before midnight on Feb. 5, 2026 Donald Trump posted a 1-minute, 2-second video from the PatriotNewsOutlet.com. The video promoted a debunked conspiracy claim about voting machines during the 2020 election. The video ends with a 2-second clip of a meme video showing the Obamas as cartoonishly rendered apes with the intro of the "Lion Sleeps Tonight" song. Trump's post was later removed.
A post (archived here) published on X on Feb. 6, 2026 by @yashar includes a 7-second clip from Donald J.Trump's Truth Social post. The caption reads:
A video posted on President Trump's Truth Social account portrays former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.
The clip posted by @yashar shows a few seconds from the voting machine portion of the video (pictured below):
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from x.com/yashar/status/2019656598172627272.)
The clip from the meme video (pictured below) appears between 4-6 seconds in the shortened @yashar video.
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from x.com/yashar/status/2019656598172627272.)
The 1-minute, 2-second video was posted (archived here) by Trump @realDonaldTrump on Truth Social on Feb. 5, 2026 at 11:44 p.m. In this post, the 2-second clip of the Obamas appears between 58-60 seconds. At the time of writing Trump's post of the video was deleted, about noon Eastern Time on Feb. 6, 2026.
Before the post was deleted, Lead Stories had reached out to the White House Press Office for a statement. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded by email, including a link to the original posting of the full "Lion Sleeps Tonight" meme video by @xerias_x on X (archived here). Leavitt wrote:
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.
Initiated by a court order, the Michigan investigation team obtained forensic access to a DS 200 tabulator, the machine that counts the votes. A Telit 4G wireless chip manufactured in Taiwan, was discovered embedded into the motherboard. The voting machine tapes clearly indicate modem engagement and transmission of election data.Some of the anomalies that we noticed in the 2020 general elections that five key states all stopped counting at the certain time in these key battleground states. These were all where the software Dominion machines, ess machines were used, the Smartmatic, the GEMS software. So when the vote stopped counting, and this has been noted in other countries as well, President Trump was significantly ahead. When reporting and counting resumed, there was a massive spike occurred that favored Joe Biden.
