White Conservatives Keep Blaming Obama For Their Own Racism. I’m Looking At You, Newt Gingrich!

It has been just under a decade since former President Barack Obama was the commander in chief of these United States. Ten years. On Jan. 20, 2026, that will be how much time has passed since Obama occupied the Oval Office, and had it smelling like shea butter, freshly washed legs, and Black love. (I’m guessing. I was never there, but I’m pretty sure that’s what it smelled like.)

For some weird reason, white conservatives still haven’t gotten over his two-consecutive-term presidency, and what’s worse, they keep blaming him for their own racism.

Let’s start with Newt Gingrich.

Recently, the former GOP congressman sat down for an interview with America First Policy Institute to rail against anti-conservative things, including what he called the “Rooseveltian System,” referring to The New Deal, a series of economic, social, and political reforms implemented by President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1938 in response to the damage done by the Great Depression. Gingrich said we have “spent the last 90 years decaying” under that system, because Republicans hate the idea of governments bailing anyone out who isn’t a corporate billionaire. Anyway, somehow, with no proper segue whatsoever, Gingrich started blustering about how Obama made America “more racist.” 

“Obama was a major factor in creating a much more racist and much more dangerous America,” Gingrich said.

This, of course, isn’t the first time Gingrich has made his own racism an issue to be blamed on a member of the Obama family. In February of last year, he remarked that former First Lady Michele Obama is  “more racially intense” than her husband, which is why he predicted she would not run for president, a prediction that could also have been reached via the fact that she had said multiple times that she had no interest in running for president.

Gingrich is also very far from the first white Republican to claim it was Obama who exacerbated racial tensions in America.

In 2023, former NYC Mayor and loyal Trump stooge Rudy Giuliani said during an episode of his podcast that post-slavery racial tensions in America “began with Obama.” Giuliani, of course, made that comment while he was drowning in the legal woes he created for himself by backing President Donald Trump’s 2020 election fraud lies, and leading the racist charge against Black former election workers  Ruby Freeman and Wandrea Arshaye “Shaye” Moss.

Following the killing of Charlie Kirk, conservative commentator and Fox News’ blonde bimbo prototype, Megyn Kelly, said this of Obama while whitesplaining the political landscape that right-wingers believe led to Kirk’s death:

“We haven’t felt like ourselves since Barack Obama. He was such a slick snake. This affable guy wearing good suits and looked the part and sounded the part and dressed the part. But so divisive in his messaging. He’s the one who started to inject race where no one had been doing it. He’s the one who started to use his pen in the phone to shove things down our throats that we didn’t want. He’s the one who shoved through an entitlement on our healthcare and our personal doctor visits that he promised he wouldn’t mess with, and he did, really hurting people and causing massive anger and open lies.”

Here’s what I wrote about that at the time:

Obama spent eight years defending himself against allegations of being a socialist, communist, Marxist, Muslim, terrorist-sympathizing foreigner, to the point where he felt compelled to show two forms of his birth certificate to combat lies that he was ineligible to be president. As I’ve written before: “Obama wasn’t just the first Black president. He was the first president who was obligated to prove he was president, even after he was sworn in as president.”

During the eight years that Barack Obama was president, he was not the person who made an issue of his race; they are.

All Obama did was emerge into the political spotlight by daring to run for president while being a Black man with an African name. He wasn’t particularly radical. He wasn’t an ideologue (unlike our current president). He didn’t lack presidential decorum (unlike our current president). He didn’t mention race nearly as often as his race and nationality were weaponized against him by white people who just couldn’t fathom anyone but an all-American white man serving as the so-called leader of the free world.

I suppose it is possible that, before Obama became a household name, many white conservatives were blissfully unaware of the discussions around systemic racism happening within the confines of the Black community. Perhaps they saw the way Black America celebrated the nation’s first Black president and thought, “Wait, have Black people been unhappy in the land of freedom and equality for all?” But just because white people are only recently discovering a thing doesn’t mean it hasn’t been there all along. This is another truth they just can’t seem to fathom.

They don’t even seem to detect the hatefulness in their own rhetoric, as they claim it’s everyone else who is responsible for the division.

In fact, let’s go back to Kelly and Michelle Obama real quick.

In 2023, Kelly sat down with Newsmax’s Eric Bolling so the two could construct an entire imaginary world where the former first lady was running for president, ignoring the fact that she repeatedly said she wasn’t, much like Gingrich.

Kelly insisted that the Obamas are secretly running the Biden administration, that Michelle is seen as a “savior figure by the Democrats,” and that she would “galvanize” Republicans against her by calling them racist because she hates America.

“I think Michelle Obama is seen as a savior figure by the Democrats,” Kelly said. “However, she’s also gonna motivate Republicans. And I’m sure she’ll say, ‘I’m motivating to them because they’re all racists.’ No, it’s because you don’t like America.” (Again, this is a completely imaginary scenario in which Michelle has galvanized make-believe Republicans during a make-believe presidential campaign, and then had the make-believe nerve to play the make-believe race card.)

“This woman has no faith in the goodness of Americans, at least not if they have the little ‘R’ after their name as opposed to the little ‘D,’” Kelly went on to say.

Here’s what I wrote about that:

So, Michelle doesn’t like America because she doesn’t like Republicans but is OK with Democrats? It appears that while crafting in her mind a fictional world in which Michelle is the Democratic party’s presidential Jesus, Kelly has also conjured up a world where conservative Republicans don’t vehemently and consistently show their contempt for liberal Democrats.

Just about every single prominent Republican politician and pundit, including Kelly herself, has expressed negative views of Democrats, “leftists,” immigrants, Black Lives Matter advocates (and/or Black lives in general), Muslims, the LGBTQ community, feminists, critical race theorists, pro-choice advocates, and, of course, the ubiquitous “woke.”

These are also Americans that hard-right conservatives have “no faith in the goodness of.” Is Kelly ready to acknowledge that neither she nor the rest of her ideological ilk honestly like America either? Is she essentially saying that no one really likes America?

While we’re here, how about another example of white conservatives projecting their own racial insecurities on the first Black president? Here’s Fox News host Jesse Watters claiming our 44th president, who was in charge of the country for eight years after being elected by American voters twice, lacks “an American perspective.”

“Remember, this is a guy whose father has roots in Africa,” Watters said. “This is a guy who spent a lot of his childhood in Southeast Asia…and then spent a lot of time in Hawaii. Was that the last state to get a star on the flag? He’s never really looking at things from an American perspective.”

What Watters clearly meant is that Obama doesn’t view the world through a white American lens. Again, that’s not Obama’s race problem, and it’s not Black people’s race problem; it’s theirs. The same people who are currently trying to ban Black history into “woke” oblivion in order to appease the delicate sensibilities of white people are claiming it’s Obama and the Black collective who are rejecting racial progress and causing continued racial division.

It would be laughable if it weren’t so obnoxious, hypocritical, and indicative of the very systemic racism white conservatives like Gingrich, Kelly, Giuliani, Watters, and, for damn sure, President Donald Trump are scrambling to deny.

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