Barack Obama hits back at President Trump with ‘very disturbing’ video depicting him as a monkey.
WASHINGTON — Former President Barack Obama is breaking his silence on a recently deleted, disturbing video posted on President Trump’s Truth Social depicting him and the former first lady as monkeys.
The 44th president let out a disgusted laugh and tore into his successor’s “very troubling” behavior as he blasted Trump for bringing a lack of decorum to the White House.
“I can see that the majority of the American people find this behavior very troubling,” Obama told podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen in an interview that aired Saturday.
“It’s true that it’s getting attention. It’s true that it’s disturbing,” he added. “But as I travel around the country… [and] meeting people, they still believe in respectability, good deeds, kindness, and there is this kind of comedy that happens on social media and on television.”
Trump’s Feb. 5 Social Truth has come in the form of a video refuting the controversial allegations that the 2020 election was rigged. The end of the video included a clip showing the Obamas as monkeys.
It appeared that the 2020 election video was screen recorded and that the monkey segment appeared as the next video in line and was not part of the original clip.
The segment portraying the Obamas as monkeys appeared in a widely circulated meme video depicting Trump as the King of the Jungle and showing popular votes as characters from “The Lion King.” Only a snippet of that meme video was shown in Trump’s post.
White House officials say the staffer “accidentally” posted the video to his Public Truth account. Trump later told reporters that he “didn’t see” the monkey part at the end of the video and that he “of course” condemned the racist parts of the clip.
Trump did not apologize to Obama for the video, which set off a wave of backlash from Republicans in Congress.
“Well, I don’t have a message. I didn’t know about it, so I mean it went up. I don’t have a message,” Trump told a reporter when asked about his message to those who were offended by the article.
The 44th president did not focus on the monkey video in his interview with Tyler Cohen and pointed out that the Democrats’ playbook against immigration enforcement in Minnesota should be an example of their resistance to Trump.
“The truth is that there doesn’t seem to be any shame about this from people who felt like you had to have some kind of behavior and a sense of propriety and respect for the office,” Obama added.
Obama was silent on this video when the fire broke out. In general, he has been selective in his scrutiny of controversies under Trump’s second term.
For example, he mentioned the collapse in Minnesota that is now ending and the Trump administration’s recent reversal of the EPA’s finding that climate change is “dangerous,” which has been used to justify a number of regulatory policies against greenhouse gas emissions.
