Obama Speaks Out After Racist Video Appears on Trump’s Social Media
ormer US president Barack Obama has condemned a racist video circulated by Donald Trump, describing the episode as a disturbing reflection of the current political climate.
In a newly released interview with US podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen, Obama addressed the clip, which featured animated apes with the faces of him and his wife Michelle Obama edited onto them. The video briefly appeared on Trump’s Truth Social account earlier in February.
Obama, 64, who did not mention Trump by name, said Americans still valued “decency, courtesy and kindness”, even as social media amplified what he described as a “clown show” of hateful content. He also criticised the growing lack of restraint in political discourse, saying standards once expected of public figures had eroded.
“There used to be a sense of decorum … that’s been lost,” Obama said.
The clip appeared at the end of a montage promoting unproven claims about the 2020 US election and was deleted after triggering widespread backlash. Asked about the post the following day, Trump declined to apologise, saying he had done nothing wrong and claiming he had not watched the full clip before sharing it.
Michelle Obama, 62, has not commented publicly.
Press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Trump in a statement to People, saying the clip was “an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King”. The White House later issued a follow-up statement saying the post had been uploaded “erroneously” by a staff member and removed once the mistake was discovered. The individual involved was not identified.
When asked days later whether the employee had been disciplined or dismissed, Trump rejected the suggestion.
During the same podcast, Obama also appeared to confirm a belief in aliens, saying they were real but that he had never seen them. He dismissed claims that extraterrestrials were being held at Area 51, joking that such a conspiracy would have been hidden from the president.
Asked what question he most wanted answered upon taking office, Obama replied jokingly: “Where are the aliens?” He later made a similar remark during a 2021 appearance on The Late Late Show with James Corden.
After the comments went viral, Obama clarified in a social media post that while the vastness of the universe made the existence of life elsewhere statistically likely, he had seen no evidence during his presidency that extraterrestrials had contacted Earth.
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