Iowa Congressman Steve King says former President Obama is partly to blame for this week’s shootings at a practice by Republican Members of Congress for this year’s Congressional Baseball Game:
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) is pointing a finger at former President Barack Obama for the attack on Republican lawmakers at a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, on Wednesday.
“I do want to put some of this at the feet of Barack Obama,” the congressman said in an interview with Simon Conway on WHO Iowa radio. “He contributed mightily to dividing us. He focused on our differences rather than our things that unify us. And this is some of the fruits of that labor.”
Earlier Wednesday, King stopped by the crime scene to pray and told The Washington Post: “America has been divided. And the center of America is disappearing, and the violence is appearing in the streets, and it’s coming from the left.”
King repeated his claims on Twitter:
The center of America is disappearing, and the violence is incited by the leading cultural voices of the Left. https://t.co/A4s2HjpQxG
— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) June 14, 2017
Of course, as The Huffington Post notes, King himself has a long history of inflammatory rhetoric:
In 2016, King said on “All In With Chris Hayes” on MSNBC that people who are white have contributed to civilization more than any other “subgroup.”
In March, he suggested that Muslim children were preventing “our civilization” from being restored.
And in April, when a King staffer failed to show up for a meeting with a Latina constituent who called him out for the runaround, he responded with a tweet that said, “Do you always lie in English?”
South Carolina Republican Mark Sanford says we should be looking to the current occupant of the White House, not the former one:
In the wake of the tragedy that unfolded yesterday at a GOP members baseball practice, one Republican congressman is arguing that the president is “partially to blame” for the severe divide in politics currently plaguing the nation.
“I would argue that the President is at least in partially — again not in any way totally, but partially to blame for demons that have been unleashed,” Mark Sanford, R-SC, said on MSNBC.
While Sanford initially noted that the events were “surreal,” he believes that the event is a time to reflect and reconsider the state of our nation.
He noted that the polarization now seen in Congress is the most extreme it has been in the “roughly 20 years” he’s been in politics.
These “demons” were recently observed by Sanford while attending a constituent senior center, where residents freely exchanged expletives when arguing over political issues.
Though Sanford was careful not to blame Trump entirely, he said of Congress members: “we ought to call” Trump’s behavior “bizarre.”
King’s claims are, of course, absurd. While there was plenty to criticize about President Obama, the idea that he was divisive is utterly absurd, unless you consider the fact that he was constantly under attack from conservatives to be “divisive.” As for Sandford’s comments, all I will say is that Donald Trump’s words, and actions, speak for themselves.
