Former US president Barack Obama has criticised a lack of shame and decorum in the country’s political discourse, responding for the first time to a post on Donald Trump’s social media account that depicted him and former first lady Michelle as monkeys.
The video shared on Mr Trump’s Truth Social account on February 5 prompted widespread backlash from across the political spectrum, with the White House initially rejecting “fake outrage” only to then blame the post on an error by a staff member and take it down.
Trump posts, then deletes, video depicting Obamas as monkeys
Near the end of a one-minute-long video about election conspiracy theories, 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.
Mr Obama responded to the video for the first time in an interview with political podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen, released on Saturday.
“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,” Mr Cohen said in the 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 Mr Trump, Mr Obama responded by saying the majority of Americans “find this behaviour 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.”
Mr Obama predicted that such messaging would hurt Mr Trump’s Republicans in midterm elections, and that “ultimately, the answer is going to come from the American people”.
Mr Trump has told reporters he stood by the thrust of the video’s claims about election fraud, but that he had not seen the offensive clip at the end.
AFP