Only a smattering of Republicans spoke out about clip in which Obamas’ faces were superimposed on bodies of apes

Top Democrats erupted with fury on Friday and challenged more Republicans to respond to Donald Trump posting a racist video that depicts Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.

The clip appeared during one of the 79-year-old US president’s increasingly frequent late-night posting sprees to his Truth Social account, and shows the laughing faces of the former president and first lady superimposed on the bodies of primates in a jungle setting, bobbing to the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight.

They appear briefly at the end of a minute-long video made by a third party that amplifies Trump’s persistent but false claim that he won the 2020 election, when in fact he lost to Joe Biden. The conspiracy-theory video is a repost of content stamped with the logo of the website Patriot News Outlet, a site supportive of Trump, a Republican.