Obama Spotlights MAGA’s ‘Deeply Troubling’ Behaviour In Response To Trump’s Racist Ape Video
Former President Barack Obama called out MAGA’s “deeply troubling’ behaviour in a measured response to the racist video shared by current President Donald Trump, which depicted the former president and wife Michelle Obama as apes.
Obama sat for an interview, published on Saturday, with liberal influencer Brian Tyler Cohen, in which he was asked to weigh in on conservatives’ saying things that would have been “disqualifying just a few years ago now,” but now not only feel “acceptable,” but are “actually rewarded.”
He brought up instances such as Vice President JD Vance saying “you don’t have to apologise for being white anymore,” as well as Trump’s now-deleted infamous ape post on Truth Social.
The video has been removed, but it received backlash from Democrats and Republicans. The president, however, refused to apologise for uploading the video in the first place.
He instead claims the video was uploaded by a staffer, who did not have action taken against them, and that he hadn’t seen the portion of the video featuring racist imagery.
“It’s important to recognise that the majority of the American people find this behaviour deeply troubling,” Obama said.
He added, “It’s true that it’s a distraction. But, you know, as I’m traveling around the country, as you’re traveling around the country, you meet people – they still believe in decency, courtesy, kindness, and there’s this sort of clown show that’s happening in social media and on television.
“And what is true is that 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, right? So that’s been lost.”
However, the former president said he still believes a majority of Americans don’t approve of the administration’s behaviour or values, pointing to protests in Minnesota in the wake of aggressive immigration crackdowns and the killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.
He commended the outpouring of organising and community building that has come out in response to Trump’s immigration agenda.
“In a, you know, systematic, organised way, citizens saying this is not the America we believe in, and we’re going to fight back,” Obama said. “And we’re going to push back with the truth and with cameras and with peaceful protests and shining a light on the sort of behaviour that in the past we’ve seen in authoritarian countries and we’ve seen in dictatorships, but we have not seen in America, and that kind of heroic sustained behaviour in sub-zero weather by ordinary people is what should give us hope.”