President Obama scratched his name off the list of 33 people to blame for the rise of Donald Trump at a press conference Thursday, insisting that the current Trump conundrum is entirely the GOP's own creation.
"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," Obama said from the Rose Garden during a press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. "I'm not going to validate some notion that the Republican crackup that's been taking place is a consequence of actions that I've taken."
While Obama acknowledges that he does share the blame for widening the partisan divide, he refused to accept responsibility for the "tone" of politics that's enabled Trump's rise and his angry, divisive rhetoric. That, he says, is wholly the work of GOP leaders and conservative media that have been pushing the "notion that everything I do is to be opposed, that cooperation or compromise somehow is a betrayal, that maximalist, absolutist positions on issues are politically advantageous, that there is a 'them' out there and an 'us' and the 'them' are the folks causing the problems you're experiencing."
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If the Republican Party wants to figure out how this "circus" transpired, Obama says, all they need is some "introspection."
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