Obama addresses racist video shared by Trump: ‘There doesn’t seem to be any shame’

Former US president Barack Obama criticizes a lack of shame and decorum in the country’s political discourse, responding for the first time to a post on US President Donald Trump’s social media account that depicted him and former first lady Michelle as monkeys.

The video, shared on Trump’s Truth Social account on February 5, sparked 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 taking it down.

Near the end of a 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.

“The discourse has devolved into a level of cruelty that we haven’t seen before…Just days ago, Donald Trump put a picture of you, your face on an ape’s body,” asks left-wing political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen in a wide-ranging podcast interview.

“And so again, we’ve seen the devolution of the discourse. How do we come back from a place that we have fallen into?”

Without naming Trump, Obama responds by saying the majority of Americans “find this behavior deeply troubling.”

“There’s this sort of clown show that’s 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, right? That’s been lost.”