At a joint press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, President Obama was asked whether he considers himself responsible for the rise of Donald Trump. Here’s the question in its entirety:
Some of your critics have pointed to the incredibly polarized political climate as under your administration, as contributing to the rise of someone as provocative as Donald Trump. Do you feel responsibility for that, or even some of the protectionist rhetoric from some democratic candidates?
His response was a thing of beauty, starting with a chuckle about how incredible it is some Republicans would blame President Obama for Donald Trump:
With respect to your first question, I've heard this argument a number of times. I have been blamed by Republicans for a lot of things, but being blamed for their primaries and who they're selecting for their party is novel.
He was just getting started.
He mentioned the obsessions with his birth certificate and questioning his patriotism:
That there's a them and us, and it's the them that are causing the problems we're experiencing, and the tone of that politics which I certainly have not contributed to. I have not -- you know, I don't think that I was the one to prompt questions about my birth certificate, for example. I don't remember saying, hey, why don't you ask me about that. Why don't you question whether I'm American or whether I'm loyal or whether I have America's best interests at heart.
In the rest of his response, he even manages to point out that the extreme positions of Donald Trump really aren’t any different than those of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio. Watch his response and read the some of the text below:
Look, I've said -- I said at the state of the union that one of my regrets is the degree to which polarization and the nasty tone of our politics has accelerated rather than waned over the course of the last seven and a half years, and I do all kinds of soul searches in terms of are there things I can do better to make sure we're unifying the country, but I also have to say, Margaret, that objectively it's fair to say that the Republican political elites and many of the information that lets social media, television stations, talk radio, have been feeding the Republican base for the last seven years a notion that everything I do is to be opposed, that cooperation or compromise somehow is a betrayal, that maximalist absolutist positions on issues are political advantageous.
That there's a them and us, and it's the them that are causing the problems we're experiencing, and the tone of that politics which I certainly have not contributed to. I have not -- you know, I don't think that I was the one to prompt questions about my birth certificate, for example. I don't remember saying, hey, why don't you ask me about that. Why don't you question whether I'm American or whether I'm loyal or whether I have America's best interests at heart.
Those aren't things that were prompted by any actions of mine, and so what you're seeing within the Republican party is to some degree all those efforts over a course of time creating an environment where somebody like a Donald Trump can thrive. You know, he's just doing more of what has been done for the last seven and a half years, and, in fact, in terms of his positions on a whole range of issues, they're not very different from any of the other candidates. It's not as if there's a massive difference between Mr. Trump's position on immigration and Mr. Cruz's.
Mr. Trump may be more provocative in terms of how he says them, but they're not that different. And they're not that different from Rubio's position, despite the fact that Cruz and Rubio's families are the result of immigration and the openness of our society. So I am more than happy to own the responsibility as president, as the only office-holder who is elected by all the people to continue to make efforts to bridge divides and help us find common ground. As I've said before, I think that common ground exists all across the country.
You can find the entire transcript of the speech here.