Former President Barack Obama has responded to the racist video posted by President Donald Trump’s social media account earlier this month.
During an interview with YouTuber Brian Tyler Cohen, Obama said many Americans “find this behavior deeply troubling.”
“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,” Obama said in the interview, which was posted on YouTube Saturday.
“There’s this sort of clown show that’s happening in social media and on television,” Obama added, describing much of the noise around Trump’s presidency as a “distraction”.
Obama’s response follows outrage over the video, which depicted Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended the clip, saying “please stop the fake outrage.” Trump refused to apologize for the social media post, telling reporters “I didn’t make a mistake” aboard Air Force One.
The video, which was posted at the beginning of Black History Month, has since been deleted. The White House blamed a staffer for “erroneously” posting the video clip.
Obama also shared his thoughts on the immigration crackdown and protests in Minnesota and elsewhere around the country, telling Cohen they have left a good number of American people saying “we’re going to live up to those values that we say we believe in.”
“It 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,” the 44th president said.
Obama called the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis last month “a heartbreaking tragedy” and said it was “a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.”
He also said that the Trump administration has given explanations for the deaths of Pretti and Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman killed by an immigration agent, “that aren’t informed by any serious investigation.”
