Former President Barack Obama took on Donald Trump on Tuesday after the current president swiftly blamed the “radical left” in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Obama — in a moderated conversation at the Jefferson Educational Society’s annual global summit — did not refer to Trump by name while addressing the role the presidency plays to “constantly remind” Americans of the “ties that bind us together” in contentious times.
“I think George W. Bush believed that. I believe that people who I ran against — I know John McCain believed it. I know Mitt Romney believed it,” Obama said.
“What I’m describing is not a Democratic value or a Republican value. It is an American value. And I think at moments like this, when tensions are high, then part of the job of the president is to pull people together,” he said.
Following Kirk’s assassination last week, Trump slammed those on the left who compared Kirk to a Nazi, calling such rhetoric “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.”
