Former President Barack Obama called the kind of rhetoric coming from President Donald Trump and his administration “a clown show” in a podcast interview that aired Saturday.
Obama was asked by YouTube podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen about the “de-evolution of the discourse” coming from Trump, Vice President JD Vance and others in their administration, including a racist video Trump posted online that depicted the former president and his wife, Michelle Obama, as apes.
Obama did not directly address the video, but discussed Trump’s actions, rhetoric and his administration’s mass deportation agenda.
“I think it’s important to recognize that the majority of the American people find this behavior deeply troubling,” Obama said, speaking broadly about the administration’s behavior for the first time since Trump reposted the video. “It is true that it gets attention. It’s true that it’s a distraction.”
People around the country “still believe in decency, courtesy, kindness, and there’s this sort of clown show that’s happening in social media and on television,” Obama added. “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 [of the president], right?”
Trump drew widespread condemnation from lawmakers in both parties after he posted the racist video to his Truth Social feed earlier this month. While he removed the post, he declined to apologize for posting it.
Obama also criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for their brutal tactics in Minnesota, telling Cohen, “The rogue behavior of agents of the federal government ... is deeply concerning and dangerous.”
“This is not the America we believe in, and we’re going to fight back, and we’re going to push back with the truth and with cameras and with peaceful protests and shining a light on the sort of behavior that in the past we’ve seen in authoritarian countries and we’ve seen in dictatorships, but we have not seen in America,” the former president added.
In the wide-ranging interview, Obama also discussed the problems plaguing his own party, calling for a “robust” primary in 2028 to determine the Democratic Party’s future.
“We shouldn’t be afraid of having a robust debate. I want all comers to sort this out. I benefited from having about as grueling a primary as I could have. It made me a better candidate. It ultimately made me a better president because I had been tested. My ideas had been tested,” the former president said.
He also called for Democrats to nominate a younger candidate who is “plugged into the moment” in 2028, though he did not mention former President Joe Biden, who was plagued by concerns about his age and mental acuity when he ran for re-election in 2024 and ultimately suspended his campaign.
“Part of it has to do with the fact that I was young,” Obama told Cohen about why he believed he was able to mobilize so many young voters when he ran for president in 2008.
“I’m 64 now. I’m pretty healthy — 64, feel great. But the truth is, half of the references that my daughters make about social media, TikTok, etc., I don’t know who they’re talking about. There is a element of at some point you age out, you’re not connected directly to the immediate struggles that folks are going through,” the former president added. “And so, I’m not making a hard and fast rule here, but I do think that Democrats do well when we have candidates who are plugged into the moment, to the zeitgeist, to the times.”
