Former President Barack Obama said President Donald Trump crossed the line.

In a recent interview with The New Yorker, Obama addressed the controversial AI video shared by Trump in February. The video was shared on Truth Social and depicted Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes. The post caused immediate backlash, as even Trump allies condemned the video for its overt racism.

The video was indirectly addressed shortly after, but now Obama is speaking out more directly.

“I don’t take it personally,” he told The New Yorker. “I mean, I’m always offended when my wife and kids get dragged into things, because they didn’t choose this…That’s a line that even people whose politics I deeply reject, I would expect them to care about. I would never talk about somebody’s family in that way.”

He also said the bigger danger is a political culture that treats cruelty and misinformation like entertainment.

Obama’s remarks arrive as he has been reflecting publicly on what the Trump era has done to American politics. The New Yorker reported that Obama sees the current moment as one shaped by division, spectacle, and the fading of basic civic norms.

He has also said in other recent interviews that many Americans still want decency in public life, even as outrage and viral content dominate the conversation.

“You know, it is true that it gets attention. It’s true that it’s a distraction. But, you know, as I’m traveling around the country, as you’re traveling around the country, you meet people. They still believe in decency, courtesy, kindness. And there’s this sort of clown show that’s happening in social media and on television,” he said during an appearance on Brian Tyler Cohen’s podcast.

The exchange is another sign that Obama is increasingly using his post-presidency platform to push back on Trump without making the fight about personal grievance.

Instead, he is framing it as a larger battle over the big picture and what kind of behavior people are willing to normalize online and in politics.

On Cohen’s podcast, he also said, “There doesn’t seem to be any shame” when it comes to the lack of decorum in politics lately. He also felt “a sense of propriety and respect for the office” had been lost.