Barack Obama has once again proven himself to be iconic by his response to Donald Trump‘s post of a video depicting him and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes.
On February 9, Trump posted a 60-second clip to Truth Social, which initially appears to be about vote counting in swing states, but then cuts to the faces of the Obamas superimposed on apes dancing in the jungle to The Tokens’ 1961 song The Lion Sleeps Tonight.
This weekend, Obama spoke to liberal podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen, who asked him about the current tone of US politics. Cohen cited Trump’s racist video among several recent controversies, saying that discourse “has devolved to 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,” Cohen says.
Obama responds: “It’s important to recognise that the majority of the American people find this behaviour deeply troubling.
“It is true that it gets attention. It’s true that it’s a distraction.”
But he added that while travelling around the US, he met people who “still believe in decency, courtesy, kindness.”
Obama continued, “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.”
Trump posts depiction of Obamas as apes. Image: X
‘I didn’t make a mistake’
In the aftermath of the video, which was widely slammed by the public and both sides of US politics, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said:
“This is from an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King. Please stop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.”
Speaking with reporters after the incident, Trump said, “of course,” he condemned the video’s end, but insisted he had nothing to apologise for.
“No, I didn’t make a mistake,” he said on Air Force One, adding that he had “looked at the beginning” of the video and it “was fine”.
“I looked in the first part, and it was really about voter fraud in, and the machines, how crooked it is, how disgusting it is.
“Then I gave it to the people. Generally, they’d look at the whole thing. But I guess somebody didn’t, and they posted.
“We took it down as soon as we found out about it.”
Main Image: Barack Obama. Source: YouTube