Former President Barack Obama insinuated that President Donald Trump is in part to blame for the death of Charlie Kirk.
Speaking during the Jefferson Educational Society’s global summit, Obama declared the nation was an “inflection point, not just around political violence, but there are a host of larger trends that we have to be concerned about.”
“Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, what happened to Charlie Kirk was horrific and a tragedy,” he said, later adding, “And so, when I hear not just our current president, but his aides, who have a history of calling political opponents ‘vermin’, enemies who need to be ‘targeted,’ that speaks to a broader problem that we have right now and something that we’re going to have to grapple with, all of us.”
“Whether we’re Democrats, Republicans, Independents, we have to recognize that on both sides, undoubtedly, there are people who are extremists and who say things that are contrary to what I believe are America’s core values,” Obama continued.
The statement suggests that Trump’s comments have fueled the country’s violent behavior.
“But I will say that those extreme views were not in my White House. I wasn’t embracing them. I wasn’t empowering them,” he stated. “I wasn’t putting the weight of the United States government behind extremist views. And that…when we have the weight of the United States government behind extremist views, we’ve got a problem.”
Obama noted that “part of the role of the presidency is to constantly remind us of the ties that bind us together.”
President Trump asserted that the “problem we have is on the left, if you look at the problem. The problem is on the left. It’s not on the right like some people like to say is on the right.”
“The problem we have is on the left,” he reiterated. “When you look at the agitators, when you look at the scum that speaks so badly of our country, the American flag burnings all over the place, that’s the left, that’s not the right.”
