During an interview on NBC’s Today show that aired Tuesday morning, President Barack Obama fielded a baffling set of Trump-centric questions from host Matt Lauer. Chief among them was a question in which Lauer asked if Obama feels responsible for Trump’s ascendancy. Business Insider reports:
At one point, host Matt Lauer asked Obama whether he felt responsible at all for the "hunger" for Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump's message. Obama suggested he did not.
"The message that Donald Trump's putting out has had adherence a lot of times during the course of our history," Obama replied.
"Talk to me if he wins," he added. "Then we'll have a conversation about how responsible I feel about it."
The president then predicted that the American public would ultimately reject Trump.
"But I'm pretty confident that the overwhelming majority of Americans are looking for the kind of politics that does feed our hopes and not our fears, that does work together and doesn't try to divide us, that isn't looking for simplistic solutions and scapegoating but looks for us buckling down and figuring out how do we make things work for the next generation," he continued.
Obama is nothing if not graceful when answering bad questions. His answer is the obvious one: Donald Trump is relying on racist rhetoric that is unexceptional throughout America’s history, recent or otherwise. Trumps happen not because a president brings back racial enmity, but because it has always been there.
Of course, some racist and xenophobic sentiment toward the Obama presidency in “post-racial America” has animated the Trump campaign and lit the fires of growing hate groups in America, but that sentiment is far from “responsibility.” The large number of Americans who agree with Trump are responsible for Trump. It’s as simple as that.
Watch the interview below.