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The behavior hasn’t slowed in Trump’s second term — in February, his Truth Social account reposted a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, a post that drew widespread condemnation before it was deleted.
More recently, while deflecting questions about delays and rising costs tied to his Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation, Trump told reporters Monday (June 22): “Are you ready? Barack Hussein Obama.”
Obama said part of how he avoided getting consumed by outside noise during his own presidency was simple: he tuned most of it out entirely.
“The other thing that I learned pretty early in this gig was you have to screen out the noise in order for you to understand what’s in front of you and deal with it,” he said. “My whole presidency, I never watched cable TV, never watched cable news, never read, I didn’t have social media. There were people on my staff whose job it was to monitor what folks were saying, because you also want that feedback loop. And the flip side of that is you also then don’t get puffed up when things are going good.”
He also pushed back on the idea that Trump’s public hostility reflects how he behaves in person.
“I believe in face-to-face. I believe in conversation,” Obama said. “So if this — whoever you were talking about — was in front of me, which has happened a couple times, he doesn’t talk like that because he knows better. I think there is — that filter of the phone creates a situation where people just say kind of crazy stuff that they would never say to your face with no consequences.”
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