>I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of people in the US who believe that the most inflammatory and divisive leader America had in modern history was Obama.

You want to know why a lot of those people, who are reactionary by nature, thought Obama was so divisive?

It's because they couldn't stomach being led by someone who wasn't white.

>The main difference between Trump and Obama is that Trump is teared apart by the media, while Obama was cuddled by it.

You'll notice that Obama was roundly (and rightfully) criticized by the left for his actual policies, and was criticized by the right for his skin color. For those who focus on policy ramifications, Obama was repeatedly critiqued. The problem is the right wing media machine couldn't outright drop a hard -er or call him "boy", so they had to use emotional cues to insult him personally. Forget about actual policy, especially because his signature policy, the Affordable Care Act, was copied verbatim from enacted GOP legislation.