Former US president Barack Obama has condemned a racist video circulated by Donald Trump, calling the incident a disturbing reflection of today’s political climate.

Speaking in a newly released interview with US podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen, Obama addressed the clip – which featured animated apes with the faces of him and his wife Michelle edited onto them – after it briefly appeared on Trump’s Truth Social account earlier in February.

Obama, 64, who didn’t mention Trump by name, said Americans still valued “decency, courtesy [and] kindness”, even as social media amplified what he described as a “clown show” of hateful content.

He also criticised the growing lack of restraint in political discourse, noting that standards once expected of public figures have eroded.

“There used to be a sense of decorum … that’s been lost,” Obama said.

The clip – which appeared at the end of a montage pushing unproven claims about the 2020 US election – was deleted after sparking widespread backlash.

Pressed on the post the following day, Trump refused to apologise, insisting he had done nothing wrong and claiming he hadn’t watched the full clip before posting it.

Obama’s wife, Michelle, 62, has not publicly commented.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt defended Trump in a statement to People, saying the clip was simply “an internet meme video depicting President Trump as the King of the Jungle and Democrats as characters from The Lion King“.

“Please stop the fake outrage,” she said.

Shortly after, the White House issued a follow‑up statement saying the post had been uploaded “erroneously” by a staff member and removed once the mistake was noticed. The individual responsible has not been identified.

However, when Trump was asked some days later if the employee had been “fired or disciplined”, he dismissed the idea entirely.

In other revelations on the podcast, Obama appeared to confirm a belief in aliens.

“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” he said in answer to questions from Cohen in a “lightning round”.

But he said aliens weren’t being kept at the infamous Nevada Air Force base known as Area 51.

“There’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States,” Obama said.

Cohen then followed up with: “What was the first question you wanted answered when you became president?”

“Where are the aliens?” Obama said, before laughing.

It’s not the first time Obama has spoken about aliens. He also made a similar joke while discussing life outside Earth on a 2021 episode of The Late Late Show with James Corden.

“The truth is, that when I came into office, I asked, ‘Is there the lab somewhere where we’re keeping the alien specimens and spaceship?’,” he said.

After Obama’s aliens answer went viral on Sunday (US time), he followed up with a tweet.

“Since it’s gotten attention, let me clarify,” he wrote.

“Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good that there’s life out there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we’ve been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!”