Trump's Vile Obama Video Follows the White House's Official White Nationalist Line
DHS and other agencies have been spewing racist goals as government policy
On Thursday night, the president of the United States posted a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. The video remained on Trump’s Truth Social account well into Friday before being removed amidst widespread condemnation. The White House initially dismissed critical reactions as “fake outrage,” with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt defending the video as a depiction of “President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King”—just a harmless little riff on a beloved Disney classic! The Lion King, of course, features no apes—but this administration routinely features white nationalist messaging. And when called out, it always rushes to excuse the inexcusable.
Last month, after a defenseless Minneapolis protester was killed by federal agents, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller baselessly labeled him a “terrorist” and “assassin.” When the backlash—boosted by video evidence contradicting Miller’s characterization—became too great, Miller publicly blamed “reports from CBP on the ground” for misinforming him. That was hardly an acknowledgment of error but it represents the strategy this White House takes whenever it can’t get away with “alternative facts”—this is the “double-down first, scapegoat someone if that doesn’t work” administration. The same allergy to accountability Miller exhibited was present here, too: the White House eventually blamed an unnamed staffer for the racist depiction of the Obamas. True to form, the man who has always operated as if apologizing is a cardinal sin said, “No, I didn’t make a mistake.”
Trump is right that this wasn’t a mistake: It was fully in step with his—and his movement’s—animating commitment, a white nationalist conception of America, that is now also part of official administration propaganda.
It’s Different When It’s the State
Trump cut his teeth in politics by leading the conspiratorial birther charge against Obama so there is nothing new about him trafficking in racist rhetoric. But what he did from Trump Tower he is now doing from the Oval Office. It would be bad enough if the person who amplified this was a far-right provocateur. But this is the president of the United States using his preferred mode of communication to echo centuries-old unmistakably racist tropes. And it is how his administration has proceeded since the moment he resumed office.
Although the pattern permeates the entire administration, the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Kristi Noem offers the starkest example yet of how thoroughly white nationalist messaging has been institutionalized in this regime.
Last month, Noem, who once used her willingness to kill her puppy as a bizarre indicator of toughness, addressed ICE’s killing of Renee Good at a podium bearing this slogan: “One of Ours, All of Yours.” An analysis by Brendon Beebe traced this slogan’s origins not to Nazi Germany—though the Nazis used similar language—but to Spain’s fascist Falange movement from the same era. “The podium slogan crystallized that stance in a pithy—if chilling—motto,” Beebe explained, “an attack on one federal officer would be treated as an attack by all of the perceived enemy, be it protesters, bystanders, or a broader community.”
The slogan wasn’t some staffer’s social media post or reactionary influencer’s attempt to go viral on X. This was the DHS secretary at an official government event invoking the language of retaliatory statism—language that echoes fascist movements. The symbolism was deliberate and the message unmistakable: federal law enforcement now operates under an us-versus-them framework borrowed from authoritarian movements America once universally condemned. The DHS is doing everything it can to make sure Trump 2.0 is this country’s first truly Schmittian administration.
It used to be that official White House social media accounts offered bland informational updates. Noem’s DHS, by contrast, uses social media like a perpetual white nationalist recruitment campaign.
Consider some “lowlights” from the past year.
It posted:
“Which way, American man?” alongside a representation of Uncle Sam at a crossroads: with “homeland” on one side and “invasion” and “cultural decline” on the other, mirroring the title of an infamous white nationalist text, Which Way Western Man? published by a neo-Nazi imprint.
A recruitment advert called, “We’ll Have Our Home Again”—a neo-Nazi anthem written by a band affiliated with a whites-only nationalist group that collaborated with neo-Nazi organizations.
The 19th-century painting American Progress—frequently cited in white nationalist and “Great Replacement” theory circles. The caption it used was laden with white nationalist symbolism: “A Heritage to be proud of, a Homeland worth Defending.”
Content by “Mr. Robert,” an X user whose account reads, “Wake Up White Man” and promotes neo-Nazi messages.
A message with exactly 14 words and two capitalized Hs, which some interpreted as invoking the white supremacist “14/88” code.
Unambiguous affirmations of Christian nationalism: a video of federal agents preparing for a crackdown operation featuring a Bible verse referring to “the wicked” who “flee [from] the righteous,” with a caption that labels immigrants “an existential threat to America”; an image featuring a “God Bless ICE” sign next to a Bible verse implying that the agency’s cruelty toward immigrants is a divine directive; a recruitment video that appropriates a famous passage from the Old Testament book of Isaiah, “Here am I, send me,” to suggest that helping Trump carry out his crackdown on immigrants is a form of spiritual obedience to God.
A video featuring an image of “Moon Man,” a McDonald’s character that has been appropriated by white nationalists.
An exhortation to everyday Americans to “help your country and yourself” by reporting immigrants to ICE.
Again, DHS is only one department—but these views are routinely expressed throughout the whole administration. When the federal government constantly posts memes curated from white nationalist discourse, it’s the opposite of an innocent mistake. It’s a pattern. It’s intentional. It’s official policy.
Telling a White Nationalist Story
The flip side of advancing a white nationalist agenda is the administration doing everything it can to thwart America from reckoning with its own past. It needs to downplay—or, ideally, erase—the very history that pushes against its warped conception of America.
An exclusionary story patterned on ethnonationalist lines is thus very important to this administration, which makes anything smacking of racial progress anathema. To suggest that memorializing or even just acknowledging our past national sins is important is also, from the MAGA perspective, an intolerable concession to liberals, who have championed the cause for civil rights and affirmatively value multiculturalism and racial diversity.
That’s why the National Park Service removed a slavery exhibit from Independence National Historic Park in Philadelphia and eliminated Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a free-entry day for national parks. A threat of review also prompted the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to preemptively close an exhibit critical of the U.S.’s proto-Trumpian response to Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution nearly a century ago. A number of federal agencies canceled Black History Month celebrations, with Secretary Marco Rubio declaring that the State Department would end its “focus on political and cultural causes that are divisive at home and deeply unpopular abroad.”
To the white nationalist, racial progress and ethnic diversity are actually outcomes to avoid.
Republican Radicalism
It has been clear for a while that white nationalism has penetrated the right-wing grassroots.
Politico published previously private group chat messages from Young Republican leaders—including state and local officials—containing racist, antisemitic, and pro-Nazi content last year. Conservative commentator Rod Dreher, not exactly unfriendly to Trump or MAGA, reported that Washington insiders believe that between 30% and 40% of younger Republicans in D.C. are Nick Fuentes fans. And, of course, Tucker Carlson, who has been trucking in racist, antisemitic garbage for years now is a darling of the MAGA right.
But now this sewage has risen to the highest levels of government. It runs up and down the right-wing universe.
Occasionally a high-profile Republican speaks up—as Sen. Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina, did about the racist Obama video—but these are rare exceptions. For the most part, if Republicans have any qualms, they keep them to themselves. Sometimes, they’ll try and turn the tables with, “Actually, the Democratic Party is the party responsible for slavery and segregation.” But today’s Republican Party is the furthest possible political organization from the one that worked toward an end to slavery in Lincoln’s day.
To accept that the parties are continuous requires believing that today’s GOP—led by Trump and populated by insurrectionists, Charlottesville marchers, ICE enthusiasts, and scores and scores of people who have made their peace with and even defend these extremists—somehow represents the same tradition that freed the slaves. Or even just the same tradition as the Republicans who marched for civil rights. It requires pretending that the congressional Republicans who enable or ignore all this still share ideological DNA with those who fought for the Civil Rights Act.
Political parties transform over time. What matters isn’t the label but the principles they hold and the actions they take. Many joined the Republican Party during the Reagan era because it stood—however imperfectly—for constitutional governance, limited federal power, free markets, and not backing down from authoritarian regimes abroad. Today’s GOP has inverted nearly every one of those commitments.
For decades, Republicans have reflexively labeled Democrats as socialists and communists. Yet when confronted with documented evidence of extremist policies within their own party, they not only suddenly demand everyone ignore what’s happening in plain sight—they also fully get in line behind a president who affirmatively embraces all the cruelty and the bigotry.
What we are witnessing isn’t a handful of isolated incidents. This is a White House awash in white nationalist messaging. The Obama video is the fully predictable outcome of an administration that has leaned into an ethnonationalist agenda.
Steven Greenhut, a journalist based in Sacramento, Calif., contributed to this story.
© The UnPopulist, 2026
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Neither the Supreme Court nor the Republican Congress have been checks on Trump’s abuse of power. If you think he has been abusing his Presidential power and destroying democracy, only we the American people voting for a Democratic Congress can be a check on him. No matter your political affiliation, vote Democrat. They will get things done.
What a bunch of liars. "The Lion King" didn't feature any apes? What about Robert Guillaume's portrayal of the mandill ape Rafiki--the main ape? Does that not count? That scene lasted more than half a second, yet I've never heard that scene be called "vile."