Conservative commentator and Indian-origin MAGA ally Dinesh D’Souza sparked a controversy after calling out a recently shared AI video of the former US president barack obama Michelle Obama was portrayed as a “funny and harmless” monkey. Social media accused him of hypocrisy, noting that he had previously condemned racist rhetoric against Indian-Americans in the US Republican movement.US President Donald Trump shared the video on Truth Social, which includes a 62-second clip in which the Obama family are depicted as apes. It also features other prominent Democrats, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, who are depicted as animals. The video was condemned as racist across party lines.Trump said he “didn’t see” the Obamas’ part of the video and claimed he only watched the beginning before staff released it. “I didn’t make a mistake,” he told reporters. The post was later deleted amid backlash from Democrats and Republicans.D’Souza, himself an Indian-born Trump ally, responded by downplaying the racist content. “In context, this is both funny and harmless,” he wrote in an The internet reminded Dinesh that he was only in America fighting against anti-Indian hatred, and now he finds racism against black people (in this case, the Obamas) “funny.”Last year, D’Souza said he was appalled by the racist and anti-India rhetoric from some supporters of the American right. “The right never talks like this. So who on our side is legitimizing this despicable depravity?” he said. He called the abusive messages directed at him and other Indian-Americans degrading and said he had not seen such hatred in his 40-year career.Republican Senator Tim Scott described the video shared by Trump as “the most racist thing I’ve ever seen in the White House.” White House press secretary Carolyn Levitt initially defended it as an “Internet meme video” and told critics to “stop the false outrage.”
