As Donald Trump continues to shrug responsibility for an AI-generated video posted to his Truth Social account of the Obamas depicted as apes, Barack Obama has responded.
The 44th president chalked up the clip, as well as recent rhetoric around Renée Good and Alex Pretti, to the public “clown show” of social media and the lost sense of “decorum” and “respect” for the office, after Trump blamed the post on a staffer whom he said has not been fired.
“First of all, I think it’s important to recognize that a majority of the American people find this behavior deeply troubling,” Obama told Brian Tyler Cohen in a recent interview. “It is true that it gets attention. It’s true that it’s a distraction. But as I’m traveling around the country, as you’re traveling around the country, you meet people, they still believe in decency, courtesy, kindness.”
Obama continued, “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. So, that’s been lost.”
Karoline Leavitt previously slammed the public reaction to the video as “fake outrage,” defending it as a Lion King parody. Despite her defense, the video was taken down shortly after. “A White House staffer erroneously made the post. It has been taken down,” a rep claimed.
After refusing to apologize since he “didn’t make a mistake,” Trump doubled down this week and said no staffer has been fired over the post.
“That was a video on, as you know, voter fraud,” said the POTUS, noting it was “a fairly long video that had a little piece that had to do with The Lion King. It’s been very well, it’s been shown all over the place, long before that was posted.”