Bill Kristol has a long history of peddling falsehoods and distortions. Today, he has an op-ed piece in the New York Times, in which he attempts to tie Obama even closer to the shameful rhetoric of his pastor. While I agree that there’s no defending the remarks made by Rev. Wright regarding Hillary Clinton, I believe it’s also equally difficult to argue that Obama endorses the reverend’s views. Kristol attempts to do just, though, this by falsely asserting that Obama attended a sermon last year in which Wright spewed particularly fiery rhetoric concerning the Iraq War as the senator sat in the pews nodding in agreement. He draws this from a NewsMax article by Ronald Kessler:
In fact, Obama was present in the South Side Chicago church on July
22 last year when Jim Davis, a freelance correspondent for Newsmax,
attended services along with Obama.In his sermon that day, Wright tore into America, referring to
the “United States of White America” and lacing his sermon with
expletives as Obama listened. Hearing Wright’s attacks on his own
country, Obama had the opportunity to walk out, but Davis said the
senator sat in his pew and nodded in agreement.Addressing the Iraq war, Wright thundered, “Young
African-American men” were “dying for nothing.” The “illegal war,” he
shouted, was “based on Bush’s lies” and is being “fought for oil
money.”
The problem with this story, is that on the same day that Obama was supposedly nodding in agreement to Wright’s words, he was also campaigning in Miami, Florida (this was before Florida was stripped of their delegates and the candidates agreed to stop campaigning there). Marc Ambinder has the details here.
