Jennifer Rubin tells us What We Learned At The National Press Club. BTW, he received a 40 second standing ovation when he took the podium. Think the press is out of touch with the American people?
The pastor man is a hater and a divider so how are we supposed to buy that Obama is a lover and a uniter when he sat in that pew for half his life. He sent his children to school in the church of hate - anybody have access to the curriculum. I would love to see what they were taught.
The Rev. Jeremiah Wright said Monday that he will try to change national policy by “coming after” Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) if he is elected president.
The pastor also insisted Obama “didn’t denounce” him and “didn’t distance himself” from Wright’s controversial remarks, but “did what politicians do.”
Wright implied Obama still agrees with him by saying: “He had to distance himself, because he's a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was [portrayed as] anti-American.”
Wright, who was Obama’s pastor for 20 years and performed his wedding, made the explosive comment during a chaotic question-and-answer session at the National Press Club in Washington, following the pastor’s remarks about the black church in America.
“I said to Barack Obama last year, ‘If you get elected, November the 5th I'm coming after you, because you'll be representing a government whose policies grind under people,’ Wright said.
He also stood by the foul, racist Farrakhan here. Wright said Farrakhan "was one of the most important voices of the twentieth and twenty first century":
Wright was also asked about his relationship with Nation of Islam founder Louis Farrakhan, whom Wright described as merely haven once said that Zionism -- not Judaism -- was a poisonous weed. (Farrakhan has far more than that one comment in his collection of anti-Semitic statements.
Farrakhan, Wright said, is "one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century," noting the Million Man March. "When Louis Farrakhan speaks, it's like when E.F. Hutton speaks...Black America listens."
"Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy," Wright said, since Farrakhan had not enslaved Africans and brought them in chains to the U.S.
Wright's security was provided by bodyguards from Farrakhan's Nation of Islam
In the clip below, Wright addresses questions about his patriotism, his thoughts on Louis Farrakhan, and his relationship with Obama.
On whether he should apologize for shouting in a sermon "God damn America" for its treatment of minorities: "God doesn't bless everything. God condemns some things. And dem, D-E-M, is where we get the word damn. God damns some practices and there's no excuse for the things that the government, not the American people, have done.
He speaks for G-d. Now that's rich.
Dan M reports the ass-hat was in Detroit last night. This article also has links to his entire speech. "Why this guy warrants a moment of airtime is beyond me. of course our gangsta mayor was up first on the docket but that's for another day".
Watch the Full Speech:
The
Rev. Wright: Part 1
The
Rev. Wright: Part 2
The
Rev. Wright: Part 3
The
Rev. Wright: Part 4
UPDATE: THIS AINT HELL covered the action outside the Press Club. Check out his pics and reportage here.
UPDATE: Dana Milbank:
Should it become necessary in the months from now to identify the moment that doomed Obama's presidential aspirations, attention is likely to focus on the hour between nine and ten this morning at the National Press Club. It was then that Wright, Obama's longtime pastor, reignited a controversy about race from which Obama had only recently recovered - and added lighter fuel.
Speaking before an audience that included Marion Barry, Cornel West, Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party and Nation of Islam official Jamil Muhammad, Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, defended the view that Zionism is racism, accused the United States of terrorism, repeated his view that the government created the AIDS virus to cause the genocide of racial minorities, stood by other past remarks ("God damn America") and held himself out as a spokesman for the black church in America.
His claim that the September 11 attacks mean "America's chickens are coming home to roost"? (More here)
Wright defended it: "Jesus said, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.' You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic divisive principles."
His views on Farrakhan and Israel? "Louis said 20 years ago that Zionism, not Judaism, was a gutter religion. He was talking about the same thing United Nations resolutions say, the same thing now that President Carter's being vilified for and Bishop Tutu's being vilified for. And everybody wants to paint me as if I'm anti-Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago. He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century; that's what I think about him. . . . Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and he didn't make me this color."
He denounced those who "can worship God on Sunday morning, wearing a black clergy robe, and kill others on Sunday evening, wearing a white Klan robe." He praised the communist Sandinista regime of Nicaragua. He renewed his belief that the government created AIDS as a means of genocide against people of color ("I believe our government is capable of doing anything").
And he vigorously renewed demands for an apology for slavery: "Britain has apologized to Africans. But this country's leaders have refused to apologize. So until that apology comes, I'm not going to keep stepping on your foot and asking you, does this hurt, do you forgive me for stepping on your foot, if I'm still stepping on your foot. Understand that? Capisce?"
