“So why did I write that piece? I want to apologize for the role I’ve played in putting what I feel is an unfit con man in the White House,” he told the Tribune on Monday. “There were times when I moved away from policy and got ugly and personal, made some comments about Obama, my political opponents, that were personal and hateful. In a weird way, seeing Donald Trump these last 2½ years, he’s the ugly final personification of that because … all he does is ugly personal insults. It’s made me think, ‘Oh my gosh, did people like me who got ugly and personal these last eight or nine years create this monster?’ And I think to a degree it did.”