Former U.S. President Barack Obama on Saturday condemned what he called a loss of shame and decorum in American politics, responding for the first time to a social media post by Donald Trump that depicted him and former first lady Michelle Obama as monkeys.
The video shared on Trump's Truth Social account on Feb. 5 sparked censure across the U.S. 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.
Near the end of a one-minute video promoting conspiracies about Trump's 2020 election loss to Joe Biden, the Obamas – the first Black president and first lady in U.S. history – were shown with their faces on the bodies of monkeys for about one second.
Obama responded to the video for the first time in an interview with left-wing political podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen, released 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," Cohen said in the interview.
