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Obama Leaves Republicans Reeling By Explaining How GOP Birtherism And Hate Built Trump

President Obama hit Republicans right between the eyes by explain­ing how birtherism and the GOP’s pol­i­tics of hate cre­at­ed Donald Trump.

I’ve actu­al­ly heard this argu­ment a num­ber of times. I have been blamed by Republicans for a lot of things, but being blamed for their pri­maries and who they’re select­ing for their par­ty is novel.

Look, I’ve said — I said it at the State of the Union that one of my regrets is the degree to which polar­iza­tion and the nasty tone of our pol­i­tics has accel­er­at­ed rather than waned over the course of the last sev­en and a half years. And I do all kinds of soul-search­ing in terms of are there things I can do bet­ter to make sure that we’re uni­fy­ing the coun­try. But I also have to say, Margaret, that, objec­tive­ly, it’s fair to say that the Republican polit­i­cal elites and many of the infor­ma­tion out­lets — social media, news out­lets, talk radio, tele­vi­sion sta­tions — have been feed­ing the Republican base for the last sev­en years a notion that every­thing I do is to be opposed; that coöper­a­tion or com­pro­mise some­how is a betray­al; that max­i­mal­ist, abso­lutist posi­tions on issues are polit­i­cal­ly advan­ta­geous; that there is a “them” out there and an “us,” and “them” are the folks who are caus­ing what­ev­er prob­lems you’re experiencing.

And the tone of that pol­i­tics — which I cer­tain­ly have not con­tributed to — I don’t think that I was the one to prompt ques­tions about my birth cer­tifi­cate, for exam­ple. I don’t remem­ber say­ing, hey, why don’t you ask me about that. Or why don’t you ques­tion whether I’m American, or whether I’m loy­al, or whether I have America’s best inter­ests at heart — those aren’t things that were prompt­ed by any actions of mine.

And so what you’re see­ing with­in the Republican Party is, to some degree, all those efforts over a course of time cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment where some­body like a Donald Trump can thrive. He’s just doing more of what has been done for the last sev­en and a half years.

…..

So I am more than hap­py to own the respon­si­bil­i­ty as President, as the only office hold­er who was elect­ed by all the American peo­ple, to con­tin­ue to make efforts to bridge divides and help us find com­mon ground. As I’ve said before, I think that com­mon ground exists all across the coun­try. You see it every day in how peo­ple work togeth­er and live togeth­er and play togeth­er and raise their kids togeth­er. But what I’m not going to do is to val­i­date some notion that the Republican crack-up that’s been tak­ing place is a con­se­quence of actions that I’ve taken.

President Obama pinned the rise of Donald Trump square­ly on the Republican Party. Republicans decid­ed that they were going to embrace birtherism, obstruc­tion and hate as a polit­i­cal strat­e­gy. The soil that grew Donald Trump was fer­til­ized by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and every sin­gle elect­ed Republican who fol­lowed the lead of con­ser­v­a­tive media by embrac­ing Obama hate.

The bill has come due for sev­en years of Republican racial­ly divi­sive pol­i­tics. Donald Trump is doing noth­ing more than run­ning on all of the same posi­tions that Republican politi­cians used to win House and Senate elec­tions in 2010 and 2014. Donald Trump isn’t hijack­ing the Republican Party. He is a byprod­uct of the Republican Party.

Obama didn’t cre­ate Trump. The Republican reac­tion to the suc­cess of Obama’s pres­i­den­cy cre­at­ed Trump. Republicans blame Obama for every­thing, but they only have them­selves to blame for the rise of Donald Trump.

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Obama Leaves Republicans Reeling By Explaining How GOP Birtherism And Hate Built Trump