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TV show mocks Barack Obama in blackface, gold chains and bandana, calls him 'dark page of America's history'

The skit also insensitively trolled Obama’s family calling them illiterate and that he should go into rap

Barack Obama has been trolled by a Russian TV late-night show that portrayed the former president in shock blackface while wearing gold chains, a bandana, and an oversized shirt. On Saturday night, November 28, Tigran Keosayan, host of the political satire show 'Mezhdunarodnaya Pilorama', or 'International Sawmill' and an actress not only made fun of Obama's recent memoir, but they also mocked his ethnicity.

During the show, Keosayan introduced the actress by saying, “we now go live to the dark page of America’s history, Barack Obama.” The actress then reportedly began a series of exaggerated gestures. She also referred to Obama as a "chocolate bunny”, The Sun reported. The actress chanted the Black Lives Matter phrase in order to poke fun at the movement. But she was soon cut by the host of the show, who reportedly said, “there's no racism in Russia."

The show immediately went more insensitive as it dragged the Obama family, calling them illiterate and that he should go into rap. Keosayan questioned the actress, “Do you consider this book ['A Promised Land'] your achievement?" The impersonator nodded as she answered: “None of my relatives that came before me could write." Also, when the host asked what was the most significant thing about the book for Obama, the actress said, “royalties."

The woman also sang a Donald Trump-themed rhyme to which Keosayan said to her, “you should have been a rap musician". At the end of the racist skit, the host proudly told his audience that people would prefer to read “the label on the bathroom air freshener" than read Obama's book.

People on the internet did not take the vile sketch in a good way and it received a lot of backlash online. Kremlin critic Alexi Navalny tweeted, “I cannot pass by another Bobroedov masterpiece. The author and screenwriter of the program is Margarita Simonyan. Together with her husband, the presenter, they receive for each issue in the region of 5 million rubles. And I remind you that Keosayan sent his daughter to study in New York." Simonyan is the editor-in-chief of Kremlin-controlled RT.

“There is nothing from the real Obama in this video (and the state of Alabama, for that matter, never voted for him), but it doesn't matter, the whole point here is this is so crystal - pure 100% racism, and so naive that he doesn't even try to hide behind,” another user said in Russian.

But Simonyan defended herself and her husband on Twitter as she wrote, “As someone who is part of an ethnic minority in Russia, Tigran regularly makes fun, on the air, of his large 'ethnic' nose and his belonging to a 'Black' community (look it up if you don't know which ethnicities are referred to as 'Black' in Russia). The failure of The Times to understand the nuances of various ethnic tensions in different countries and its attempts to transfer the specific legacy traumas of the Anglo-Saxon world onto the world...," she continued, adding The Times sent her a request for comment... :where such injustices had never come to pass are the most obvious trademarks of the multi-century racist imperialism. The racism had simply changed colors."