Former president Barack Obama speaks at the Smith Center in Las Vegas, January 8, 2022. SUSAN WALSH / AP
Former US president Barack Obama criticized a lack of shame and decorum in the country's political discourse, responding on Saturday, February 14, for the first time to a post on Donald Trump's social media account that depicted him and first lady Michelle as monkeys. In a wide-ranging podcast interview with left-wing political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen released on Saturday, Obama also compared the actions of agents enforcing the president's immigration crackdown in Minnesota to dictatorships.
The video, shared on Trump's Truth Social account on February 5, sparked censure across the US political spectrum, with the White House initially rejecting "fake outrage" only to then blame the post on an error by a staff member and taking it down. Near the end of a one-minute-long video promoting conspiracies about Trump's 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, 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. 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.
