Without mentioning Trump by name, Obama says a majority of Americans ‘find this behavior deeply troubling’.
Speaking publicly for the first time after United States President Donald Trump’s social media account depicted him and his wife Michelle as monkeys, former President Barack Obama has deplored the degradation of the country’s political discourse to a “clown show”.
“[What] is true is that there doesn’t seem to be any shame about this among people who used to feel like you had to have some sort of decorum and a sense of propriety and respect for the office, right? That’s been lost,” Obama said in a wide-ranging podcast interview with left-wing political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen on Saturday.
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The video, shared on Trump’s Truth Social account on February 5, prompted censure across the US political spectrum, with the White House initially rejecting “fake outrage” only to then blame the post on an error by a staff member and then taking it down.
Near the end of the one-minute-long video promoting conspiracies about Trump’s 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, the Obamas – the first Black president and first lady in US history – were shown with their faces on the bodies of monkeys for about one second.
“The discourse has devolved into a level of cruelty that we haven’t seen before … Just days ago, Donald Trump put a picture of you, your face on an ape’s body,” Cohen said in the interview.
“And so again, we’ve seen the devolution of the discourse. How do we come back from a place that we have fallen into?” he added.
Without mentioning Trump’s name, Obama said a majority of Americans “find this behaviour deeply troubling”, adding that it will hurt the Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.
Trump has told reporters he stood by the thrust of the video’s claims about election fraud, but that he had not seen the offensive clip at the end.
The apparently AI-generated video was set to Lion Sleeps Tonight, a song made famous by Disney’s The Lion King film. In it, the faces of the Obamas were placed atop the bodies of apes, widely smiling, perpetuating several tropes made against Black people.
The post mocking the Obamas was made during the Black History Month, a time dedicated to honouring the milestones, contributions and history of Black Americans.
Obama also compared the actions of agents enforcing Trump’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota state with dictatorships.
He called the behaviour of federal officers, which included two fatal shootings that led to mounting pressure on Trump’s mass crackdown, the sort that “in the past we’ve seen in authoritarian countries and we’ve seen in dictatorships”.
Thousands of federal agents, including those with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), carried out weeks of sweeping raids and arrests in what the Trump administration claims were targeted missions against criminals.
“The rogue behaviour of agents of the federal government is deeply concerning and dangerous,” Obama said.
However, he added he had found hope in communities pushing back against the operations.
“Not just randomly, but in a systematic, organised way, citizens saying, ‘this is not the America we believe in, and we’re going to fight back, and we’re going to push back with the truth and with cameras and with peaceful protests,” Obama said.
The aggressive anti-immigration operation in Minnesota had triggered large protests and nationwide outrage. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was subject to a partial government shutdown on Saturday as US lawmakers fought over funding the agency overseeing much of Trump’s crackdown on immigration.
Democrats are opposing any new DHS funding until sweeping changes are implemented in how ICE conducts its operations.
