Rick Santorum is blaming President Barack Obama for the increased racism exhibited by those on the right during his eight years in the White House. In a fiery attack Sunday morning the CNN contributor accused the nation’s first Black president of doing more “to exacerbate racism” in America.
“Every time there was a controversy where someone of color was involved,” Santorum said, President Obama “took the side, many times against the police, against the people of — he did it over and over and over again,” the former U.S. Senator said, as Media Matters reported.
“President Obama was, to many people out there, someone who could have come together and brought this country together,” he argued, challenging former Obama Deputy Campaign Manager Karine Jean-Pierre, currently a Senior Advisor and National Spokeswoman for MoveOn.org.
Santorum also claimed that what was “tapped into was that many, many, many people saw Barack Obama being just that. Doing more to exacerbate racism in this country.”
He was refuting Karine Jean-Pierre’s remarks reflecting on her time with Obama:
“I worked on both elections, and what we saw was pretty horrific,” Jean-Pierre told the CNN “State of the Union” panel. “You elect the first black president and there was an uproar. You saw the Tea Party, you saw the obstruction by Republicans time and time again.”
“And I would say it was swung. We get the first black president and then we swung and elected Donald Trump. And it is kind of problematic. There is something — it says a lot about this country. And what Donald Trump did is he tapped into it. Let’s not forget, he started his political career talking about birtherism, being the first person of birtherism and so he saw something as well and tapped into that, tapped into that racism that we have been seeing for the last, in particular very heavily so, the last ten years.”
“And so this is where we are,” she summed up. “He’s taking that, Donald Trump is taking that, and ran with it. And let’s not forget how he capped off his first year, we saw neo-Nazis marching in [Charlottesville] and what does he say? There are fine people on both sides. This is the president of the United States that we’re talking about.”
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