Obama Wonders How America Became ‘Toxic and Divided’ While Overlooking His Responsibility

Speaking at a rally in Wisconsin this week, former President Barack Obama expressed his supposed confusion over America’s growing division and bitterness. “I don’t understand how we got so toxic and just so divided and so bitter,” he said, seemingly oblivious to his own role in creating the very division he laments. Yet, it was during his presidency that the seeds of today’s bitterness were sown, with much of the toxicity in American politics directly tied to his rhetoric and the Democratic leadership that followed.

Let’s be clear: Obama wasn’t some unifying force dragged down by external forces. He actively stoked the flames of division.

Race relations deteriorated under Obama According to a Rasmussen poll in July 2016, a full 60% of Americans believed race relations had worsened during Obama’s presidency. The president who once claimed to bring people together presided over an era of heightened racial tension.

Obama himself demonized millions of Americans In 2008, he notoriously described middle America as clinging to their “guns or religion” out of bitterness and fear. In doing so, he laid the groundwork for dismissing and alienating those who disagreed with him, fostering the very divisions he now laments.

It wasn’t just his presidency where Obama deepened America’s divides. His Democratic successor, Hillary Clinton, followed his playbook of division when she derided half of Trump supporters as belonging to a “basket of deplorables” racist, sexist, homophobic, and beyond. That kind of rhetoric wasn’t an outlier, but rather an echo of Obama’s own approach to political opponents.

Obama promoted confrontation In his first presidential run, he encouraged his supporters to “get in their [Republicans’] face,” hardly a call for national unity. Later, in 2010, he referred to the growing Tea Party movement with the vulgar term “teabaggers”, denigrating a broad swath of Americans who opposed his policies. This wasn’t a president fostering dialogue it was a president fueling division.

And what about Obama’s comments on race? Time and again, he portrayed America as irredeemably steeped in racism. In 2014, he claimed that racism was “deeply rooted” in American society. Instead of promoting progress and reconciliation, Obama consistently painted a picture of a country trapped in perpetual bias, reinforcing a narrative of grievance and division.

Perhaps the most egregious moment came in 2016 when five police officers were gunned down in Dallas by a man motivated by a desire to “kill white people.” At their memorial service, Obama couldn’t help but inject race into the conversation, saying that “bias remains” in America and that even police departments were not immune to it. Instead of focusing on the tragedy at hand, he used the moment to push his narrative of racial division.

Obama’s hand-wringing over the “toxic” state of the nation rings hollow when you consider how much of the current bitterness can be traced back to his own words and policies. The former president seems to have forgotten that he once urged Latinos to “punish our enemies” and reward Democrats who aligned with his agenda. Is this the rhetoric of a man committed to national healing?

While Obama now pretends to be a passive observer, wondering how things got so bad, he was a driving force behind much of the political and cultural division that grips the country today. The bitterness, anger, and toxicity didn’t just appear overnight it grew in large part because of the seeds planted by his administration.

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