Rick Scott drags ‘divider in chief’ Barack Obama over ‘phony culture war’ claim

The political rift between Rick Scott and Mitch McConnell widens. Image via AP

U.S. Sen. Rick Scott returned to Fox News Radio Tuesday, where he blasted former President Barack Obama as the “divider in chief.”

Scott, who spent his first six years as Governor lamenting that Obama wasn’t a good “partner in the White House,” doesn’t seem to enjoy the post-presidential Obama much either.

Interviewer Brian Kilmeade teed up Scott’s outrage with a clip from a stump speech the former President delivered for Virginia gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe in which Obama urged supporters not to get roped into what he called “phony culture wars or fake outrage that the right wing media peddles just to juice up ratings.”

Scott relished the opportunity to address Obama’s comments directly.

“This is the divider in chief himself. He never supported law enforcement, who had the most political Attorney General currently, as far as I know of, in history. And he’s talking about Republicans having the culture wars?”

“These are our kids. And we decide what they learn,” Scott continued, veering away from the question to hit a sequence of tangentially related talking points.

“We get to make sure that when we believe in God, we can talk about God. We believe in the founding fathers, what they did, built the greatest country in the world,” Scott added. “We love the Pledge of Allegiance. We like the national anthem. We want our kids to learn the stuff that we learned. So you, you the Democrats, you the socialists, you aren’t going to do that to our kids.”

Obama has made a habit of winding up Republican politicians with his dismissals of GOP sincerity in appeals, and his subtle mockeries of the base the GOP cultivates.

He famously said in 2008 that working class voters are “bitter” because of economic changes, and “cling to God, guns, and religion.” While Obama’s days as a candidate are long behind him, it’s clear his turn of phrase and ability to whip up Republican outrage still remain.