Barack Obama has responded to a racist video shared by Donald Trump on social media that depicted him and his wife, Michelle Obama, as apes.
Speaking publicly for the first time after United States President Trump’s social media account depicted him and his wife Michelle as monkeys, former president has deplored the degradation of the country’s political discourse to a “clown show,” Al Jazeera reported.
“[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.
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.
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.
