Feb. 14, 2026, 3:49 p.m. ET
Former President Barack Obama said in a Feb. 14 interview that a video President Donald Trump posted that depicted Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, decried by many as racist, was part of a shameless “clown show.”
Obama made the comments after podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen said in the interview that a series of messages from White House officials, such as the video posted by Trump and administration officials labeling people who died at the hands of ICE agents as “domestic terrorists,” showed a level of cruelty that would have been disqualifying in earlier political times. He asked Obama how the country can come back from that discourse.
“It is true that it gets attention. It’s true that it’s a distraction,” Obama said. “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.”
“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,” Obama added.
The video was one of several posts on Trump’s Truth Social account in the late hours of Feb. 5 and early hours of Feb. 6. A brief portion at the end of the video showed the faces of the Obamas on the bodies of two apes, in what appeared to be a jungle.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt at one point defended the video as a depiction of Trump “as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from the Lion King.”
However, the post was deleted Feb. 6. Later that day on Air Force One, Trump said that he had only looked at the first part of the video, and hadn’t seen the part with the Obamas.
“We took it down as soon as we found out about it,” Trump said.
Asked whether he would apologize, Trump said, “No, I didn’t make a mistake.”
Contributing: Zac Anderson – USA TODAY
