
Former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum literally tried to blame President Obama for racism under Trump. Former Obama White House staffer Karine Jean-Pierre was not having it.

Former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum actually tried to claim that President Barack Obama is to blame for Trump's racism. But Obama White House staffer and campaign adviser Karine Jean-Pierre quickly and thoroughly set him straight.

On CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday morning, host Dana Bash led the panel in a discussion of Roseanne Barr's racist implosion, and the false equivalency that many conservatives drew with Samantha Bee's controversial remark about Ivanka Trump.

Jean-Pierre pointed out the degree to which Trump has normalized the sort of racism for which Barr was fired.


"Let's not forget how he capped off his first year, he saw neo-Nazis marching in Charlotte and what does he say?" Jean Pierre said. "They're fine people on both sides. This is the president of the United States that we're talking about."

But frequent Trump defender Santorum tried, absurdly, to push back by pinning it all on Obama.

"What's being ignored here is the role that Barack Obama played in all this," Santorum claimed, to protests from Jean-Pierre. "I mean, you just can't go from, we elected our first black president and all the sudden we get Donald Trump. There was something in between those two things."

"Clearly, it tapped into something in this country when we elected the first black president, which is the racism," said Jean-Pierre. Santorum tried to talk over her, insisting that "many, many, many people saw Barack Obama ... doing more to exacerbate racism in this country that any person."

When Jean-Pierre asked how exactly Obama did that, Santorum claimed that "every time there was a controversy with someone of color was involved, he took the side, many times against the police."

Jean-Pierre continued to push back, noting that these were instances, like that of Trayvon Martin, of wholly unjustifiable violence.

As Bash ended the segment due to time, stunned fellow panelist Bakari Sellers said, "I never thought we were going to end up with the 'Obama was racist'."

Trump actually continued his normalization of racism this week when he found a way to avoid denouncing Barr's remark, and instead attacked black journalist Jemele Hill and others.

And press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders further added to the repugnant litany when she said that calling a black woman a monkey is the same as criticizing Trump.

Trump and his supporters will stop at nothing to divide Americans, and to gaslight them while they do it. But they aren't fooling anyone.