During a White House press conference with Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, President Obama washed his hands of any blame in contributing to the sharp divisions that divide the country.

Does he really believe this?

Daily Caller:

“I’ve 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 7 1/2 years.”

“I do all kinds of soul searching in terms of, are there things that I can do better to make sure that we are unifying the country. But I also have to say… that objectively it’s fair to say that the Republican political elites and many of the information outlets, social media and news stations, talk radio, television stations 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 politically advantageous, that there is a ‘them’ out there and an ‘us’ and ‘them’ are the folks who are causing whatever the problems you’re experiencing and the tone of that politics, which I certainly have not contributed to,” Obama claimed.

“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 of those efforts over a course of time creating an environment where somebody like a Donald Trump can thrive.”

It's hard to believe that the president actually thinks his toxic, sneering, sarcastic rhetoric directed against his political opponents hasn't contributed to the political divisions in the country.

As for policy differences, why should Republicans support policies they believe to be harmful to the country?  This president construes opposition to his policies as racist, or worse.  For more than seven years, he and his administration have played the race card for all it's worth, smearing his opponents so often that the epithet of "racist" has actually lost some of its bite.

The personal attacks on the president – the controversy over his birth certificate and charges that he hates America – are no worse than attacks by Democrats on Republicans over the last 20 years.  This is politics in the age of the internet, and the fact that the president is oblivious to his own role in dividing the country shows why he was never qualified to be president in the first place.