President Obama provided an interesting perspective on the widening rift in American politics Thursday during a presidential news conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The lame-duck Obama said he personally has “not contributed to” the increasingly partisan climate in Washington and America in general during his tenure, but rather it’s those swarmy Republicans and conservative media outlets that are really to blame.

“I’ve said at the State of the Union that one of my regrets is the degree to which polarization and the nasty tone of our politics has accelerated rather than waned over the course of the last 7 1/2 years,” Obama said in the news conference, which was broadcast by MSNBC and reposed by The Daily Caller.

The president apparently came to the realization that maybe he hasn’t done all he can to bring people together, but he’s definitely not at all to blame for dividing the country.

“I do all kinds of soul searching in terms of, are there things that I can do better to make sure that we are unifying the country,” Obama said, “but I also have to say … objectively it’s fair to say that the Republican political elites and many information outlets, social media and news stations, talk radio, television stations have been feeding the Republican base for the last seven years a notion that everything I do is to be opposed, that cooperation or compromise somehow is a betrayal, that maximalist, absolutist positions on issues are politically advantageous, that there’s a ‘them’ out there and an ‘us’ and ‘them’ are the folks who are causing whatever the problems you’re experiencing and the tone of that politics, which I certainly have not contributed to.”

For anyone skeptical of the president’s perspective, he provided several examples of alleged Republican belligerence, and linked the divisive rhetoric to Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s political popularity.

“You know, I don’t think that I was the one to prompt questions about my birth certificate, for example,” the president said, according to The Daily Caller. “I don’t remember saysing, ‘Hey, why don’t you ask me about that?’ ‘Why don’t you question whether I’m American or whether I’m loyal or whether I have America’s best interests at heart.’

“Those aren’t things that were prompted by any actions of mine, and so what you’re seeing within the Republican Party is, to some degree, all of those efforts over a course of time creating an environment where somebody like a Donald Trump can thrive,” he said.

Canada’s CBCNews points out that Obama is currently enjoying his highest approval ratings in nearly three years, though an average of polls on RealClearPolitics.com show less than half of the American public approve of the job he’s done.

The approval rating, however, is far above the average approval rating for the Republican-controlled Congress, which stands at about 12 percent, and slightly above George W. Bush’s approval rating at this point in his presidency.