Former President Barack Obama implied Tuesday that President Donald Trump was to blame for Charlie Kirk’s assassination, because of “extreme” personnel and policies that aroused violent opposition.
He mourned Kirk’s death, saying it was “horrific,” but made sure to recite an (inaccurate) laundry list of Kirk’s more controversial statements, including a false claim that Kirk claimed black women were stupid.
Obama then said that Trump wanted to use Kirk’s assassination as “a rationale for trying to silence discussion around who we are as a country and what direction we should go.” He then claimed that when he had been in the White House, “those extreme views were not in my White House. I wasn’t embracing them. I wasn’t empowering them. I wasn’t putting the weight of the United States government behind extremist views.”
In fact, it was Obama who inaugurated an era of division and extremism. On the campaign trail in 2008, he encouraged his supporters to confront friends and neighbors, and “argue with them, get in their face.”
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