President Obama did not mention President Trump by name, but said that the majority of Americans “find this behavior very problematic.”
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In his first public address since President Donald Trump’s social media accounts depicted him and his wife Michelle as monkeys, former President Barack Obama lamented the deterioration of the country’s political discourse into a “clown show.”
“(What’s) true is that there’s no shame about this among people who used to feel like they had to have some kind of decorum and civility and respect for public office? That’s been lost,” President Obama said Saturday in a wide-ranging podcast interview with left-leaning political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen.
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The video, which was shared on President Trump’s Truth Social account on February 5, sparked condemnation across the US political world, with the White House initially rejecting the “false outrage” but later blaming the post on staff error and later removing it.
Near the end of the minute-long video touting the conspiracy behind President Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in 2020, the Obamas, the first black president and first lady in U.S. history, are shown resting their faces on the bodies of monkeys for about a second.
“This discourse has escalated to a level of brutality we’ve never seen before. … Just a few days ago, Donald Trump put your mugshot on the body of a monkey,” Cohen said in an interview.
“And once again, we have seen the degeneration of discourse. How do we come back from where we have fallen?” he added.
Without mentioning Trump by name, Obama said the majority of Americans find this behavior “very problematic,” adding that it would hurt Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections.
President Trump told reporters that while he stands by the video’s claims of election fraud, he had not seen the last offensive video.
The video, which appears to have been generated by AI, was set to “Lion Sleeps Tonight,” a song made famous by Disney’s film The Lion King. In it, the Obamas’ faces were placed over the bodies of monkeys, smiling broadly and perpetuating several metaphors for black people.
The post mocking the Obamas was made during Black History Month, which celebrates the milestones, contributions and history of Black Americans.
President Obama also compared the actions of Trump’s immigration enforcement officials in Minnesota to a dictatorship.
He said the actions of federal officers, including the two fatal shootings that led to mounting pressure over President Trump’s massive crackdown, were “like what we’ve seen in authoritarian and dictatorial countries in the past.”
Thousands of federal agents, including those from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), conducted weeks of intensive searches and arrests in what the Trump administration claims is a targeted mission against criminals.
“Misconduct by federal employees is deeply concerning and dangerous,” President Obama said.
But he added that he found hope in the communities that opposed the operation.
“Not randomly, but systematically and systematically, the people are saying, ‘This is not the America we believe in, and we’re going to fight back, and we’re going to fight back with the truth, with cameras, and with peaceful protest,'” Obama said.
Aggressive anti-immigrant operations in Minnesota have sparked massive protests and nationwide outrage. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was targeted by a partial government shutdown Saturday as U.S. lawmakers battled over funding for the agency that oversees much of President Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Democrats oppose new funding for DHS until fundamental changes are implemented in how ICE operates.
