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Metropolitik: Did Barack Obama offer ’08 hush money? – Metro US

Metropolitik: Did Barack Obama offer ’08 hush money?

President Barack Obama tried to “bribe” radical pastor Rev. Jeremiah
Wright into silence during the 2008 campaign, according to a report
given to the New York Post.

Based on the forthcoming book “The
Amateur”?by former journalist Edward Klein, the story claims that the
fledgling Obama organization offered Wright $150,000 to keep his mouth
shut at the height of the contentious 2008 campaign. “‘I wish you
wouldn’t speak,”?Wright quotes Obama as saying during a private meeting
in Chicago. “It’s gonna hurt the campaign if you do that.”

Excerpted directly from Klein’s book, the exchange gets even more damning:

“Barack
said, ‘I’m sorry you don’t see it the way I do. Do you know what your
problem is?’ And I said, ‘No, what’s my problem?’ And he said, ‘You have
to tell the truth.'”

The Klein account paints Obama as a liar, and
Wright as an inveterate truth teller, but there’s another person in this
account who needn’t always tell the truth, and that’s Klein. The media
have described Klein’s work as “contrived and stretched,” “devoid of
credibility”,?”poorly thought, poorly sourced” and “too good to be true
in every particular.”

Nor is “The Amateur” Klein’s first book about
the historic president. His last, called “The Obama Identity: A Novel
(Or Is It?)” [Editor’s note:?It is], details a conspiracy to prop up the
president and claims?that Obama: is a Muslim; was born in Kenya; was
funded by our enemies; plans to add his face to Mount Rushmore.

Obama’s
handling of his former pastor always struck us as disingenuous in the
name of political expedience, and this incident may yet be worth looking
into. But there’s reason to take Klein’s reporting with more than just a
grain of salt.

We’ve got something else to add to the laundry list
of media Klein complaints: “Financially self-interested.” Trying to sell
books is certainly no crime, but selling fiction as fact definitely
blurs the lines.

Follow Brayden Simms on Twitter @metropolitik

Metro does not endorse the opinions of the author, or any opinions expressed on its pages.