(Washington) Former United States President Barack Obama deplored on Saturday the degradation of political discourse reduced according to him to a “clown show”, reacting for the first time to Donald Trump’s sharing of a racist video depicting him as a monkey.
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Mr. Obama was questioned about this video, broadcast then deleted on Donald Trump’s account earlier this month on the Truth Social network, in the podcast of left-wing political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen.
The majority of people in the United States “find this behavior deeply disturbing,” said the former Democratic president (2009-2017), without explicitly mentioning the video or his Republican successor.
“It’s true that it attracts attention. It is true that it distracts attention,” he continued.
“There’s this sort of clown show that’s going on on social media and on television, and what’s true is that it doesn’t seem to cause any shame among people who previously felt that there had to be a certain decency and a sense of propriety and respect for the office, right? It was lost,” Barack Obama explained.
The video depicts the faces of Barack Obama, the country’s first black president, and his wife Michelle Obama on the bodies of monkeys.
Since removed, the publication has attracted widespread criticism from Democrats and some Republicans.
Donald Trump has played down the criticism, with the White House saying a member of his staff was responsible for the publication.
“I only watched the first part” of the video “and I did not see the whole thing”, “no one knew what was at the end”, part containing the images of the Obama couple, said the American president.
Donald Trump has a particular animosity against Barack Obama, a very popular figure with Americans.
He only calls him “Barack Hussein Obama,” using his middle name, and has helped spread conspiracy theories around the Democrat’s nationality.
During his campaign, the Republican leader increased his violent statements against immigrants and spread false information with racist overtones.
