This Trump Spokeswoman Just Blamed Obama For Terrorism During Bush’s Presidency
Last night, a Donald Trump surrogate blamed former President Obama for failing to respond presidentially to the murder of American-Israeli journalist Daniel Pearl by terrorists. Kayleigh McEnany told a CNN panel that Obama rushed off to a game of golf instead of acting presidential.
Daniel Pearl was murdered in 2002. Obama was not President, he was a senator in Illinois’s state legislature. Nice try, but you can’t justify Trump’s constant golfing instead of governing by blaming Obama for something that didn’t happen during his two terms in the White House.
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McEnany said on live television, “You have President Obama who, after the ― I believe it was after the beheading of Daniel Pearl ― spoke about how upset he was and then rushed off to a golf game.”
George W. Bush was President at the time of the murder. Pearl was a journalist for the Wall Street Journal who was abducted while on assignment in Pakistan. U.S. intelligence failed to locate the terrorists who had kidnapped him in time, and Pearl was executed on video. His remains were later found and returned to America.
McEnany used Pearl’s death to smear Obama, flying in the face of both reality and dignity for fallen Americans. The manipulation is disgusting.
Before his beheading, Pearl was forced to criticize U.S. foreign policy and announce he was a Zionist on film to propagate anti-Semitism among would-be terrorists. Pearl was an outstanding journalist and patriot. His death is among the great tragedies of the last twenty years and to use it for political gain is to disrespect his legacy.
It is possible that McEnany was attempting to refer to journalist James Foley who was executed by ISIS members in 2014, during Obama’s presidency. Obama was on vacation with his family when the news broke.
He immediately called Foley’s family members and loved ones to offer his condolences, admitting that, “it was hard for me to hold back tears listening to the pain that they were going through.”
Obama gave a public statement after speaking to the family decrying ISIS. He told America that ISIS represents a “bankrupt ideology” and “has no place in the 21st century.”
After paying his respects and listening to intelligence regarding the circumstances of the murder, Obama returned to his family vacation. He later admitted that the optics were not good, and he had made a serious mistake.
“I should’ve anticipated the optics. … It’s not something that always comes naturally to me. But it matters. And I’m mindful of that.”
His apology is for failing to represent the scope of the tragedy with his public appearance, but his handling of the situation was respectful and responsible.
McEnany and fellow Trump supporters are eager to denounce Obama for anything and everything, desperately trying to make him look at least as bad as the floundering President Trump. McEnany had no shame, even go so far as to exploit the death of Pearl who was murdered under a different president’s watch.
If Trump supporters don’t want to be seen as deplorable, they had better start acting differently.
