President Trump refuses to apologize for posting video showing President Obama as a monkey
President Donald Trump has refused to apologize for sharing a video depicting former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama as monkeys.
Former President Barack Obama said in an interview on February 14 that a video posted by President Donald Trump depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys and has been condemned by many as racist was part of a shameless “clown show.”
President Obama made the comments after podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen said in an interview that a series of messages from White House officials, including videos posted by President Trump and administration officials labeling people who have died at the hands of ICE agents “domestic terrorists,” demonstrate a level of brutality that would have been disqualifying in an earlier political era. He asked Obama how the country could recover from that rhetoric.
“It’s a fact that it attracts attention. It’s a fact that it’s a distraction,” President Obama said. “But as I travel around the country, and you travel around the country, I meet people who still believe in civility, civility and kindness.”
“There’s this kind of clown show going on on social media and on television, but the truth is that there doesn’t seem to be any shame in this among people who once felt they had to have some kind of decorum and civility and respect for public office,” Obama added.
The video was one of several posted to President Trump’s Truth Social account late on the night of February 5th and early morning of February 6th. A short segment at the end of the video showed the Obamas’ faces on the bodies of two monkeys in what appeared to be a jungle.
White House press secretary Caroline Levitt at one point defended the video, saying it depicted Trump as “king of the jungle and Democrats as characters in The Lion King.”
However, this post was deleted on February 6th. Later that day, President Trump said on Air Force One that he had only seen the first part of the video and not the part about the Obamas.
“We removed it as soon as we learned about it,” Trump said.
Asked if he would apologize, Trump replied, “No, I didn’t make a mistake.”
Contributor: Zach Anderson – USA TODAY
