Obama breaks silence over Trump video depicting him and Michelle as monkeys

Washington: Former US president Barack Obama has criticised what he described as a growing lack of shame and decorum in American political discourse, responding for the first time to a social media post by Donald Trump that depicted him and former first lady Michelle Obama as monkeys.

The video, shared on Trump’s Truth Social account on 5 February, drew condemnation from across the US political spectrum. The White House initially dismissed the backlash as “fake outrage” before later attributing the post to a staff error and removing it.

In the closing seconds of the one-minute video – which promoted conspiracy theories about Trump’s 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden – images of the Obamas appeared with their faces superimposed on the bodies of monkeys. The clip was visible for approximately one second.

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Obama addressed the controversy during an interview released on Saturday with left-wing political podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen.

Referring to the video, Cohen said: “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.”

Asked how the country could recover from what he described as a deterioration in political debate, Obama did not mention Trump by name but said most Americans “find this behaviour deeply troubling”.

“There’s this sort of clown show that’s happening on social media and on television,” he said. “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. That’s been lost.”

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Obama predicted that such messaging could ultimately harm Republicans aligned with Trump in the midterm elections, adding that “the answer is going to come from the American people”.

Trump has told reporters he stood by the central claims in the video regarding election fraud, but said he had not seen the offensive clip at the end.