US EditionObama Reacts to Trump’s AI Video Depicting Him as an Ape: ‘There Doesn’t Seem to Be Any Shame About This’
Obama called the video depicting him and Michelle Obama as apes 'deeply troubling' and criticized the decline in political decorum while noting most Americans disapprove, he said.
- On Feb 5, the Truth Social account posted an AI video showing Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, which was deleted after nearly 12 hours amid bipartisan outrage, and Obama addressed the incident in a podcast released Saturday.
- Appended to a longer post about alleged 2020 election fraud, the ape clip was traced to an X post by meme creator Xerias and blamed on an unnamed White House staffer.
- Speaking to Cohen, Obama said there is little shame among those who once valued decorum, describing the online environment as a 'clown show' and criticizing the loss of propriety in public life.
- Several Republican senators, including Senator Tim Scott and Senator Roger Wicker, condemned the post, while Karoline Leavitt, White House press secretary, said it was shared 'erroneously' by a staffer.
- The episode has intensified concerns about AI-generated content, racist tropes linked to The Lion King imagery, and deteriorating norms amid disputes over immigration operations and the Department of Homeland Security's Feb 14 partial shutdown.
126 Articles
126 Articles
Asked About Ape Video, Obama Laments 'Clown Show'
Barack Obama is addressing the infamous ape video for the first time, and he sees it as an example of what he calls the "clown show" of American discourse at the moment. When appearing on the No Lie podcast , host Brian Tyler Cohen asked Obama about President Trump reposting a...
Barack Obama Breaks His Silence on Donald Trump's Racist Video of Him and Wife Michelle as Apes
Trump said the since-deleted video, which showed the Obamas' faces superimposed on animations of apes, was posted by an unidentified stafferBarack Obama Donald Trump Brian Tyler Cohen/YouTube; SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty NEED TO KNOWBarack Obama reacted to Donald Trump's now-deleted racist video of him and his wife, Michelle, in an interview released on Feb. 14"There's this sort of clown show that's happening in social media and on television," sa…
Former U.S. President Barack Obama claimed that under Donald Trump's second administration, U.S. politics has become a "clown show," after a video showing him as his wife Michel Obama as apes was released. "I think it's important to recognize that most of the U.S. people find this behavior deeply troubling," Obama told host Brian Tyler Cohen on his podcast "No Lie." "There's a kind of clown show that is developing on social media and television."
A video released by the White House showed the heads of former U.S. President Obama and his wife on monkey bodies and caused a storm of indignation. Now Obama expresses himself for the first time. He laments a lack of "decency".
Obama responds to racist video shared by Trump depicting him and his wife as apes
In the same interview, Barack Obama criticised the "rogue behaviour" of federal agents in Minneapolis, saying similar activity has been previously "seen in dictatorships, but not… in America".
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