Former US president Barack Obama has sharply criticized the collapse of civility in American politics, responding for the first time to a video shared on Donald Trump’s social media platform that depicted him and former first lady Michelle Obama as monkeys.
The video, posted on Trump’s Truth Social account on February 5, drew widespread condemnation across the political spectrum. The White House initially dismissed the backlash as “fake outrage,” before later attributing the post to a staff error and removing it. Near the end of the one‑minute clip which promoted conspiracy theories about Trump’s 2020 election loss the Obamas’ faces appeared on the bodies of monkeys for roughly one second.
Speaking in an interview released Saturday with political podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen, Obama said the episode reflected a broader decline in public standards. Cohen referenced the video directly, noting the “devolution of the discourse,” and asked how the country could recover from such a low point.
Without naming Trump, Obama said most Americans “find this behavior deeply troubling,” adding that political norms once taken for granted had eroded. “There’s this sort of clown show that’s happening in social media and on television,” he said. “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.”
Obama predicted that such messaging would ultimately damage Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections, saying the final judgment would come from voters.
Trump has maintained that he stands by the video’s broader claims about election fraud, though he said he had not seen the offensive clip at the end.
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