Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich discussed the state of race relations in the United States in the wake of a spree of racially inspired violence, including shootings in Dallas and Baton Rouge resulting in the deaths of eight police officers.

Gingrich argued much of the racial division is linked to President Barack Obama because of the commander-in-chief’s attacks on the police.

“At the risk of once again being divisive, I think as long as we have Barack Obama doing what he did over the last few years – you had seven-and-a-half years of a black president, seven-and-a-half years of a black attorney general. Gallup reports today race relations today than any time in the last 17 years. Why? Because how often has he hit the police? He hit the police in Cambridge and he was wrong. He hit the police in Ferguson. He was wrong. He hit the police in Florida. He was wrong. At what point does the president have some obligation to say – there are two parts to this – one, we’ve got to understand the experience of being black in America and in places like Chicago where 3,200 people have been killed in the Obama presidency. We better have a strategy that works. We don’t.”

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