Friday speaking at the University of Illinois, former President Barack Obama accused the Republican Party of embracing “wild conspiracy theories like those surrounding Benghazi, or my birth certificate.”

Obama said, “So Neither party has had a monopoly on wisdom. Neither party has been exclusively responsible for us going backwards instaed of forwards, but I have to say this, because sometimes we hear a plague on both your houses. Over the past few decades, wasn’t true when Jim Edgar was the governor here in Illinois, or Jim Thompson was governor. I got a lot of good Republican friends here in Illinois, but over the past decades, the politics of division and resentment and paranoia has unfortunately found a home in the Republican party. This Congress has championed the unwinding of campaign finance laws to give billionaires influence over our politics, systemically attacked voting rights to make it harder for minorities and the poor to vote, handed out tax cuts without regard to deficits, slashed the safety net wherever it could, cast dozen of votes to take away health insurance from ordinary Americans, embraced wild conspiracy theories like those surrounding Benghazi, or my birth certificate. Rejected science, rejected facts about things like climate change.”

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