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.
Israeli fire kills one and wounds several in Gaza: One Palestinian was killed and at least ten others were wounded by Israeli forces on Thursday, according to Al Jazeera. Mohammed Dabbash was killed by Israeli army fire in Al-Zarqa area northeast of Gaza City. Israeli troops backed by tanks and bulldozers advanced near the Kuwait roundabout east of Gaza City, opening heavy fire and injuring at least ten Palestinians along Salah al-Din Street, where Palestine Red Crescent Society crews evacuated three wounded under gunfire.
President Donald Trump will announce a multi-billion dollar reconstruction plan for Gaza and detail plans for a U.N.-authorized stabilization force for the Palestinian enclave at the first formal meeting of his Board of Peace next week, two senior U.S. officials said on Thursday.
Two federal immigration agents involved in the shooting of a Venezuelan immigrant in Minneapolis last month appear to have lied about the details of the incident, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said Friday.
A passerby jumped into a frigid Florida pond to save a pregnant woman from her sinking car recently – giving her the opportunity to safely birth her baby hours later, according to authorities and those at the center of the riveting rescue story.
A bitter dispute between Europe and the US over the future of Gaza has broken out into the open, with the EU’s head of foreign policy, Kaja Kallas, warning that Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” was a personal vehicle for the US president that removed any accountability to Palestinians or the United Nations.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has accused Donald Trump of tearing apart the transatlantic alliance with Europe and of seeking to introduce an “age of authoritarianism”, as she condemned his administration’s foreign policy in front of its allies’ top policymakers at the Munich security conference.
As Donald Trump seemed to endorse regime change in Iran, embracing a long-term goal of his ally, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Reuters reports that the US military “is preparing for the possibility of sustained, weeks-long operations” against Iran’s theocratic government.
