By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Former US President, Barack Obama has broken his silence on a racist video shared by his successor, Donald Trump on social media, which depicted him and his wife, Michelle Obama, as apes.
Obama who did not not mention Trump by name in an interview with podcaster, Brian Tyler Cohen said the “decorum” and “respect for… office” that used to guide US officials had been lost.
Following a global outrage after the video showing the Obamas as apes was shared on Trump’s Truth Social account, the US leader refused to apologise, instead saying he “didn’t make a mistake”.
The depiction appeared towards the end of the footage, asserting that the 2020 election, which he lost to Joe Biden was stolen from him.
When asked about the post Obama said that while controversial language “gets attention”, it was also a “distraction” and the majority of “people find this behaviour deeply troubling”.
The former President said that although most “still believe in decency, courtesy and kindness, there’s this sort of clown show” on social media and television.
Instead, he believed the answer to controversy was “going to come from the American people”.
In the same interview, Obama cited the “heroic” and “sustained behaviour” of people in Minneapolis in response to Trump’s deployment of 3,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents as an example of this.
He branded “rogue” activity by agents as “deeply concerning” and “dangerous”.
“The way that federal agents, ICE agents, were being deployed without any clear guidelines, training, pulling people out of their homes, using five-year-olds to try and bait their parents, all the stuff we saw… the rogue behaviour of agents of the federal government is deeply concerning,” he said.
Obama claimed that this type of behaviour has previously been “seen in dictatorships, but not… in America”.
However, he urged people to “take a moment to appreciate the extraordinary outpouring of organising, community building, [and] decency” in Minnesota, including Minneapolis.
Tom Homan, who’s leading the White House’s anti-immigration campaign, said on Thursday that the Trump administration had agreed to end the ICE operation in the state.
Launched on 1 December 2025 to crack down on illegal immigration, the operation led to the arrest of more than 4,000 people, federal authorities said.
Their mode of operation has attracted backlash. ICE agents, usually dressed in face masks and military-style camouflage gear, have repeatedly drawn angry demonstrations from residents.
Renee Nicole Good, 37, a mother-of-three, was shot dead in her car by an ICE agent early in January, purportedly in self-defence.
