Obama: Trump's Popularity a 'Racist Reaction to a Black President'
Ex-POTUS slams president's supporters as 'xenophobic and paranoid' in new book
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Barack Obama has attacked President Donald Trump and his supporters in his new book, claiming the massive popularity of the POTUS is nothing more than a "racist reaction" to his own presidency.
In his forthcoming memoir, which focuses on his first term in the White House, Obama slams Republicans as xenophobic and paranoid.
The 768-page tome, entitled "A Promised Land," is due for release on November 17.
Aside from taking swipes as his successor, Obama reflects on his political career and also divulges in his personal life and tensions in his marriage with Michelle.
He also speaks about racism in the United States, attempting to blame President Trump for racial divisions in America, despite race riots taking place during his own presidency.
He goes on to claim it was his own election as the nation's first black president that sparked some of the current division in the country.
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"It was as if my very presence in the White House had triggered a deep-seated panic, a sense that the natural order had been disrupted," Obama writes in the book, which was obtained by CNN.
Donald Trump, he claims, sensed the country's mood and took advantage of it to win the White House in the 2016 election.
"Which is exactly what Donald Trump understood when he started peddling assertions that I had not been born in the United States and was thus an illegitimate president," he writes.
"For millions of Americans spooked by a Black man in the White House, he promised an elixir for their racial anxiety."
But, Obama claims, the roots of the problem came before the current president.
He traces it to John McCain's decision to name Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate in the 2008 presidential election.
"Through Palin, it seemed as if the dark spirits that had long been lurking on the edges of the modern Republican Party -- xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, paranoid conspiracy theories, an antipathy toward Black and brown folks -- were finding their way to center stage," Obama writes.
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However, he goes on to absolve McCain of any responsibility, saying he believed the senator, who died of brain cancer in 2018, wouldn't have made the same choice if he knew what the future held.
"I'd like to think that given the chance to do it over again, he might have chosen differently," wrote Obama, who gave one of the eulogies at McCain's funeral.
"I believe he really did put his country first."
The book is the first of two parts coming from the former president - part of a $65 million deal he and Michelle Obama signed with Penguin Random House.
The former first lady's book "Becoming" sold millions of copies when it came out in 2018, setting a high bar of expectations for her husband's book.
