Former President Barack Obama has responded to a video shared on President Donald Trump’s Truth Social account depicting him and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes.
Last week, Trump’s Truth Social account shared a video that showed the Obamas’ faces superimposed onto apes as the song “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” played in the background. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt initially claimed the post was “from an internet meme video” and said to “stop the fake outage.”
But as criticism mounted, the post was deleted. A White House official told The Independent a staffer “erroneously made the post.”
Political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen, who published a 47-minute interview with Obama on Saturday, asked the former president about the video and other instances of “cruelty” in public discourse from Trump and his allies.
Obama replied: “First of all, I think it’s important to recognize that the majority of the American people find this behavior deeply troubling.”
“It is true that it gets attention. It’s true that it’s a distraction. But, as I’m traveling around the country, as you’re traveling around the country, you meet people — they still believe in decency, courtesy, kindness,” he said.
“And there’s this sort of clown show happening in social media and on television, and 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. So that’s been lost,” he added.
“But the reason I point out that I don’t think the majority of the American people approve of this is because, ultimately, the answer is going to come from the American people.”
The Independent has contacted the White House for comment.
Trump refused to apologize when asked about the video on Friday, February 6, telling reporters he “didn’t make a mistake.” When asked Thursday if he “fired or disciplined” the staffer who erroneously posted the video, Trump replied: “No, I haven’t.”
The video received widespread backlash, including from several Republican lawmakers.
Senator Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the chamber, called on Trump to remove the video after it was first posted. “Praying it was fake because it’s the most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House. The President should remove it,” Scott wrote on X.
Republican Senator Katie Britt also denounced the video, writing on X: “This content was rightfully removed, should have never been posted to begin with, and is not who we are as a nation.”
Trump was later said to be furious with both of them for having criticized the post.
Obama – the Democratic president from 2009 to 2017 – has long been a favorite target of Trump, who was a leader of the so-called “birther conspiracy” which falsely claimed that Obama was born in Kenya and was therefore ineligible to serve as U.S. president.
