The video has since been removed, but the U.S. president has refused to apologize.<\/p>\n
Now, Obama has finally responded.<\/p>\n
\u201dAs I\u2019m traveling around the country\u2026\u201d
\nFormer President Barack Obama is breaking his silence after President Donald Trump shared a shocking video on social media depicting him and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes.<\/p>\n
The now-deleted clip, posted on Truth Social earlier this month, sparked outrage across the political spectrum and reignited tensions between the two political heavyweights.<\/p>\n
In an interview with YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen released on Saturday, Feb. 14, Obama, 64, called the video \u201cdeeply troubling,\u201d describing the clip showing their faces superimposed on animated apes dancing to The Lion Sleeps Tonight as emblematic of a disturbing trend in U.S. politics.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important to recognize that the majority of the American people find this behavior deeply troubling,\u201d Obama said. \u201cIt is true that it gets attention, that it\u2019s a distraction, but as I\u2019m traveling around the country \u2026 you meet people [and] they still believe in decency, courtesy, kindness. And there\u2019s this sort of clown show that\u2019s happening in social media and on television.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
Obama also addressed the erosion of standards in the presidency, noting, \u201cThere doesn\u2019t 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\u2019s been lost.\u201d He added bluntly: \u201cThere\u2019s this sort of\u00a0clown show<\/strong>\u00a0that\u2019s happening in social media and on television.\u201d<\/p>\n White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt attempted to dismiss the uproar, telling TMZ to \u201cstop the fake outrage and report on something today that actually matters to the American public.\u201d Even some of Trump\u2019s own party members criticized the post.<\/p>\n Republican Senator Tim Scott called it \u201cthe most racist thing I\u2019ve seen out of this White House.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump<\/a>, 79, has refused to apologize, claiming the video was the work of an unnamed staffer and insisting, \u201cNo, I didn\u2019t make a mistake. I mean I look at a lot of thousands of things. I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine. I guess it was a take off on\u00a0The Lion King<\/em>\u00a0and certainly it was a very strong post in terms of voter fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n Obama\u2019s response wasn\u2019t limited to the viral video. He also criticized actions by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under the Trump administration, calling them \u201cdeeply concerning\u201d and \u201cdangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n He highlighted the federal crackdown in Minneapolis-Saint Paul, saying, \u201cIt is important for us to recognize the unprecedented nature of what ICE was doing in Minneapolis, St. Paul, the way that federal agents, ICE agents were being deployed, without any clear guidelines, training, pulling people out of their homes, using five-year-olds to try to bait their parents, all the stuff that we saw, teargassing crowds simply who were standing there, not breaking any laws.\u201d<\/p>\n Obama tied the immigration crackdown to broader concerns about U.S. values, referencing recent tragedies like the killing of\u00a0Alex Pretti<\/a>\u00a0in Minneapolis. He called it \u201ca heartbreaking tragedy\u201d and \u201ca wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.\u201d He added that explanations from the Trump administration regarding Pretti and\u00a0Renee Good<\/a>, a 37-year-old woman killed by an immigration agent, \u201caren\u2019t informed by any serious investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n Reflecting on the political climate and the public\u2019s role, Obama emphasized, \u201cThe American people will ultimately decide how they feel about these actions when they head to the ballot box \u2026 people still believe in decency, courtesy, kindness. And we\u2019re going to fight back and we\u2019re gonna push back with the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n Donald Trump faced massive backlash after posting a video portraying Barack and Michelle Obama as apes. The video has since been removed, but the U.S.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-viral-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/viralarticles.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/viralarticles.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/viralarticles.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/viralarticles.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/viralarticles.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4231"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/viralarticles.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4233,"href":"https:\/\/viralarticles.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4231\/revisions\/4233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/viralarticles.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/viralarticles.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/viralarticles.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/viralarticles.it.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u201cA wake-up call to every American\u201d<\/h2>\n
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<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"