Former President Barack Obama has publicly addressed Donald Trump’s sharing of an AI video that showed him and Michelle Obama as apes. The response came nearly three months after the video got widespread condemnation for using a racist rooted caricature.
Barack Obama responds to Donald Trump posting AI video
Barack Obama told The New Yorker that the former first lady and his children never chose public life and should remain off-limits. “I don’t take it personally,” he said. “I mean, I’m always offended when my wife and kids get dragged into things, because they didn’t choose this … That’s a line that even people whose politics I deeply reject, I would expect them to care about. I would never talk about somebody’s family in that way,” Obama added.
The AI video in question was posted by Donald Trump on Truth Social on February 5 and later deleted. It began by repeating baseless conspiracy theories about voting machines in the 2020 election, then cut to showing the Obamas’ heads superimposed onto the bodies of apes dancing to the soundtrack of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.” People immediately called it out as a modern iteration of a racist trope used for generations to dehumanize Black people.
When reporters aboard Air Force One asked Trump days later whether he would apologize, he declined, characterizing the post as unremarkable. “I looked at the beginning of it. It was fine,” Trump said. “Nobody knew that that was in the end. If they would have seen it and probably they would have had the sense to take it down,” he added.
Obama first fielded questions about the video in late February during an episode of Brian Tyler Cohen’s podcast. There, he argued that it is part of a pattern in which divisive content drowns out genuine public concern. Obama said, “It’s important to recognize that the majority of the American people find this behavior deeply troubling.”
All in all, for Barack Obama, the AI video involving him and Michelle is one chapter in a broader normalization of indecency that he believes voters, not politicians, will ultimately reject.
Originally reported by Devanshi Basu for Mandatory.
