Former President Barack Obama speaks at the Obama Foundation’s 2024 Democracy Forum on December 5, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois.
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Former President Barack Obama responded to a racist video posted by President Donald Trump’s social media accounts earlier this month.
In an interview with YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen, President Obama said that many Americans “find this behavior very problematic.”
“There doesn’t seem to be any shame in this among people who used to feel like they had to have some kind of decorum, some civility, some respect for public office,” Obama said in an interview posted on YouTube on Saturday.
“There’s this kind of clown show going on on social media and on TV,” Obama added, calling much of the noise surrounding Trump’s presidency a “distraction.”
President Obama’s response comes in the wake of outrage over a video depicting him and former first lady Michelle Obama as monkeys. White House press secretary Caroline Levitt defended the video, saying, “Please stop this false outrage.” President Trump has refused to apologize for his social media posts, telling reporters aboard Air Force One: “I made no mistakes.”
The video was posted at the beginning of Black History Month, but has since been deleted. The White House accused a staffer of “accidentally” posting the video clip.
Obama also shared his thoughts on the immigration crackdown and protests in Minnesota and across the country, telling Cohen that a significant number of Americans have left behind saying, “We’re going to stand up for the values that we say we believe in.”
The 44th president said, “It’s important to recognize the unprecedented nature of what ICE was doing in Minneapolis and St. Paul. The way federal agents, ICE agents were deployed, there were no clear guidelines, there was no training, they were pulling people out of their homes, they were using 5-year-olds to try to lure parents, all of the things that we saw were not breaking any laws, they were just tear gassing a crowd of people who were just standing there.”
President Obama called the killing of Alex Preti in Minneapolis last month a “heartbreaking tragedy” and said it was “a wake-up call to all Americans, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are under increasing attack.”
He also said the Trump administration has “not received any information from any serious investigation” into the deaths of Preti and Renee Good, 37, who were killed by immigration agents.
