Barack Obama will never miss an opportunity to juxtapose himself with Donald Trump as the pious president who preached peace. In reality, the extreme political divide of right v left began under Obama as he used divisive politics to split the nation into “us” vs “them.”
Obama was the first to label his political opponents as an “enemy,” as reported by the Washington Examiner. “Those extreme views were not in my White House,” Obama claimed in remarks to the Jefferson Society regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk. “I wasn’t empowering them. I wasn’t putting the weight of the United States government behind them. When we have the weight of the United States government behind extremist views, we’ve got a problem.”
(Obama’s typical middle-class yacht)
Economic woes were blamed on the “top 1%,” a phrase that derived from Obama’s presidency following the 2008 financial crisis. “The gap between the wealthiest and the rest of us has never been wider,” he stated in 2011. He contrasted the struggles of “working families” with the “special interests” and “wealthy few” who benefited from tax loopholes and deregulation. “I believe in an America where opportunity is open to everyone—not just those at the top,” he preached during his first campaign against Mitt Romney. The Obama Administration was touted as the defender of ordinary “folks” who were suffering due to the greed of the “wealthy few,” a class that Obama himself is within.
“We don’t think government can solve all our problems, but we don’t think government is the source of all our problems—any more than are welfare recipients, or corporations, or unions, or immigrants, or gays, or any other group we’re told to blame for our troubles,” Obama stated during the 2012 Democratic National Convention where he pushed for Obama Care. “Government” was the same as marginalized groups like the LGBTQ+ community and immigrants, Obama declared, and anyone who disagreed with his policies was acting in a discriminatory manner. Closed borders? Racist! Voting against paying into Obamacare? Racist greed directed at marginalized communities.
Legacy media ran his rhetoric 24/7 across every platform, and that rhetoric has continued today into “progressive” ideology that aligns with socialist views. Donald Trump is certainly not the first nor the last president to take an “us” vs “them” stance. In contrast to Obama, Trump began his campaign by portraying government as the problem—drain the swamp and fire the judges. Notice how there has not been a wave of violent riots in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. The “MAGA extremists” are vocal but not violent.