Last week’s assassination of conservative activist and organizer Charlie Kirk was for millions a stark reckoning about the mortal danger posed by the vilification and dehumanization of political opponents simply due to their words and ideas.

Despite the overwhelming sentiments that gripped so many, former President Barack Obama on Tuesday took an opportunity to point a thinly-veiled finger of blame at Donald Trump while simultaneously purporting to take the high road in the wake of Kirk’s death, as Fox News reports.

Obama weighs in

The former president’s remarks on Kirk’s death came during his appearance at the Jefferson Educational Society’s global summit in Pennsylvania, and while he initially appeared to take a conciliatory tone about the tragedy, his take soon took a more critical turn.

Obama stated, “Regardless of where you are on the political spectrum, what happened to Charlie Kirk was horrific and a tragedy.”

He continued, “Obviously, I didn’t know Charlie Kirk. I was generally aware of some of his ideas. I think those ideas were wrong, but that doesn’t negate the fact that what happened was a tragedy and that I mourn for him and his family.”

Not content to leave things there, Obama implied that he – and the political forces behind him – had nothing to do with the “political crisis” that pervades American discourse today, declaring that “extreme views were not in my White House. I wasn’t empowering them. I wasn’t putting the weight of the United States government behind them. When we have the weight of the United States government behind extremist views, we’ve got a problem.”

Then, taking aim at the Trump administration, Obama added, “When I hear not just our current president, but his aides, who have a history of calling political opponents ‘vermin,’ enemies who need to be ‘targeted,’ that speaks to a broader problem that we have right now,” seemingly forgetting the innumerable times individuals from within his party characterized their opponents as “Nazis,” “Gestapo,” “fascists,” and “threats to democracy,” and in the case of former President Joe Biden,” called them  “garbage.”

Trump team fires back

It was not long before the Trump White House responded to the former president’s words, with administration spokesperson Abigail Jackson stating, “Barack Hussein Obama is the architect of modern political division in America.”

She went on to assert that Obama was guilty of “famously demeaning millions of patriotic Americans who opposed his liberal agenda as ‘bitter’ for ‘cling[ing] to guns or religion.”

“Obama,” Jackson continued, “used every opportunity to sow division and pit Americans against each other, and following his presidency, more Americans felt Obama divided the country than felt he united it.”

The Trump administration representative added, “His division inspired generations of Democrats to slander their opponents as ‘deplorables,’ or ‘fascists,’ or ‘Nazis.’ If he cares about unity in America, he would tell his own party to stop their destructive behavior.”

Denying the obvious

Further angering critics of Obama’s recent commentary was his suggestion in the aftermath of Kirk’s death that “[w]e don’t yet know what motivated the person who shot and killed Charlie Kirk,” despite swiftly emerging evidence of the assassin’s far-left leanings, a type of conscious -- and malicious -- misrepresentation of which others have been accused in recent days.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins was taken to task on air by Sen. Ted Cruz for her claim that no clear motive had yet been established in Kirk’s killing, despite revelations to the contrary made by Utah prosecutors this week.

‘ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel was suspended from his show indefinitely for accusing “the MAGA gang” of “trying to characterize [the shooter] as anything other than one of them,” a network decision that offers at least some hope that blatantly political falsehoods will continue to be exposed and treated with the contempt they deserve.