At a rally in Wisconsin on Tuesday, former President Barack Obama claimed, somewhat disingenuously, that he couldn’t understand why America has become so “toxic, divided, and bitter.”
“I don’t understand how we got so toxic and just so divided and so bitter,” he mused. “I get why sometimes people just don’t want to pay attention to it. And we all have friends like that; we have family members who are just like, “Ahh, y’know, it’s all a circus out there.”
Barack Obama: "I don't understand how we got so toxic and just so divided and so bitter." pic.twitter.com/OWj3uicQ1o
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 22, 2024
However, Obama’s own rhetoric, along with that of other Democratic leaders, has contributed to the division both before and during his presidency. A July 2016 Rasmussen poll, conducted six months before Obama left office, revealed that 60% of Americans believed race relations had worsened since his election.
In 2016, while campaigning for president, Democrat Hillary Clinton made her infamous comment: “You could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the ‘basket of deplorables.’ Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it.”
In April 2008, during his presidential campaign, Obama controversially remarked, “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
More Obama:
2008: “I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face.”
2009: “I don’t want to quell anger. I think people are right to be angry. I’m angry.”
2010, in an excerpt from Jonathan Alter’s book, “The Promise: President Obama, Year One,” Alter quoted Obama referring to members of the conservative Tea Party group as “teabaggers,” a vulgar slang term explained here.
In 2010, discussing the possibility of the GOP regaining control of the House of Representatives, Obama said, “They see a chance to take back the House, maybe the Senate. If they succeed, they’ve already indicated they’ll return to the same policies from the Bush administration. That means we’re going to face hand-to-hand combat up here on Capitol Hill.”
Just prior to the 2010 election: “If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re gonna punish our enemies, and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us’ — if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election — then I think it’s going to be harder.”
2014: Obama said racism was “deeply rooted” in America, stating, “This is something that’s deeply rooted in our society, deeply rooted in our history.”
At a 2016 memorial service for five Dallas police officers who were ambushed and killed by a man who, according to Dallas police chief David Brown, stated he “wanted to kill white people, especially white officers,” Obama remarked:
America, we know that bias remains. We know it. Whether you are black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or of Middle Eastern descent, we have all seen this bigotry in our own lives at some point. We’ve heard it at times in our own homes. If we’re honest, perhaps we’ve heard prejudice in our own heads and felt it in our own hearts. We know that. And while some suffer far more under racism’s burden, some feel to a far greater extent discrimination’s sting. Although most of us do our best to guard against it and teach our children better, none of us is entirely innocent. No institution is entirely immune. And that includes our police departments. We know this.
