Gingrich: Race relations worse under Obama

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) says President Obama has made race relations worse by criticizing the police.

Speaking on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" Monday, Gingrich said it would be hard to improve race relations "as long as you have Barack ObamaBarack ObamaOmarosa: Trump camp keeping list of enemies Clinton camp: 'Don't know' if NC will be called on election night The game-change moment for marijuana MORE doing what he did over the last few years."

Gingrich said that most would have expected better "if you’d had seven and a half years of a black president, seven and a half years of a black attorney general," yet "Gallup reports race relations today are worse than at any time in the last 17 years.” 

“Why? Because how often he has 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,” Gingrich added.

Gingrich said Obama’s comments condemning the Sunday shooting in Baton Rouge, La., that left three police officers dead and three wounded came too late.

“Seven and a half years into his presidency, he began to realize, now that we’ve had two massacres of police men, that maybe as president of the United States and leader of law and order in America, he should say something on behalf of law and order. I mean, that’s fairly pathetic.”

Obama on Sunday fiercely condemned the bloodshed in Baton Rouge, noting its similarity to another attack in Dallas earlier this month.

“These are attacks on public servants, on the rule of law, and on civilized society, and they have to stop,” he said.

The gunman, 29-year-old Gavin Long, appears to have visited websites focused on complaints about how police officers treat black citizens. He was shot and killed at the scene.