Obama Appears to Blame Trump For Rise in Anti-Semitism: ‘We Had a President in the White House Who Fanned Those Flames’

Photo credit: Alyssa Pointer, AFP for Getty Images

Former President Barack Obama seemed to blame his successor Donald Trump for the recent rise in anti-Semitism.

Between 2015-2019, anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. jumped to a near-record high, according to the Anti-Defamation League. 2020 had the third-highest number of number of assaults, harassment and vandalism toward American Jews, since the ADL began tracking the figures in 1979.

In a written interview published Monday by Jewish Insider, Obama referenced a speech he gave at the Israeli presidency in Washington D.C. at the end of his presidency.

“I said that the seeds that gave rise to the Holocaust have always been with us. They have found root across cultures, faiths, and generations. And they have reemerged again and again, especially in times of change and uncertainty,” Obama wrote to J-Insider. “When I gave that speech, it was clear that anti-Semitism was on the rise around the world. People’s anger over everything from immigration to inequality was boiling over — and many of them were looking for someone else to blame. And for four years, we had a President in the White House who fanned those flames.”

Obama then struck an optimistic tone, noting that the hatred has oftentimes been countered by “far larger expressions of solidarity.”

“So while I never anticipated what happened at the Capitol on January 6th, some of the negative and divisive trends that we’ve seen at home and around the world have contributed to a rise in anti-Semitism and other forms of hate,” he said. “In many cases, I’ve been pleased to see these acts of hate countered by far larger expressions of solidarity. People are recognizing that we all have a responsibility to stand together against bigotry and violence, to not be silent but there will always be a need for vigilance against anti-Semitism.”

He added, “We’ll never be able to wipe out hatred from every single mind, but we must do everything we can to fight it. And more people are realizing that. That dynamic, more than anything, is what gives me hope.”

Obama’s interview comes just weeks after Israeli-Palestinian fighting that killed at least 243 people in Gaza and left 12 people in Israel, including two children, dead. The heightened Middle East conflict, and resulting protests in America, caused a 75% increase in anti-Semitic acts according to the ADL.

In the email exchange, Obama also addressed the political divide in America, and blamed right-wing media and social media for allowing “people to live in bubbles.”

“America has been fractured by a combination of political, cultural, ideological, and geographical divisions that seem to be growing deeper by the day,” Obama said. “I think a lot of that has to do with changes in how people get information. I’ve spoken about this before, but if you watch Fox News, you’re presented with a different reality than if you read The New York Times. And everything is amplified by social media, which allows people to live in bubbles with other people who think like them.”

Obama noted “democracy won’t work” until Americans can distinguish fact from fiction.

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