The chair of the Uxbridge Select Board shared a video on Facebook depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.
Brian Butler shared a link to an AI-generated video featuring animals with faces of politicians from the Democratic Party singing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by The Tokens.
The video was shared on Sunday but had disappeared from Butler’s page as of Tuesday afternoon.
“I know I’m gonna catch a load of crap, but this is way too funny!” Butler wrote on the now-deleted Facebook post. “C’mon you have to agree.”
The video depicts former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a warthog, former President Joe Biden as a kind of monkey known as a mandrill and President Donald Trump as a lion — whom the animals all bow down to at the video’s end.
At the beginning of the video, two apes with the faces of the Obamas can be seen dancing.
Comparing or depicting Black people as monkeys or apes has long been considered a racist act.
Neither Butler nor other members of the Uxbridge Select Board immediately responded to requests for comment on Tuesday.
