Hours before the first presidential debate, President Obama’s campaign was handling the fallout from the release of a 2007 video in which the candidate praises his controversial pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
The video, which has been relentlessly hyped by several conservative news outlets, was taken from an Obama speech to a largely black audience at Hampton University in Virginia.
In it, Obama slams the federal government’s responses to the victims of Hurricane Katrina and gives thanks for his then-pastor.
“[Wright is] “my pastor, the guy who puts up with me, counsels me, listens to my wife complain about me,” Obama said. “He’s a friend and a great leader. Not just in Chicago but all across the country.”
Wright became a major source of controversy in the 2008 election when another video leaked showing the inflammatory religious figure denouncing America.
Republicans seized upon Wright as a chance to paint Obama as a racially divisive figure. The candidate later distanced himself from his Chicago-based pastor.
Wright has played little role in the 2012 race, though some on the right have tried to resurrect him as a thorn in Obama’s side.
Buzz built late Tuesday that several conservative news organizations — including The Daily Caller, run by Fox News star Tucker Carlson — were set to release a racially charged, never-before-seen video that would rattle the presidential race.
However, the Hampton University speech was widely covered five years ago, though new sections of the video emerged Tuesday.
In the video, Obama, then a U.S. senator from Illinois, denounced the federal response to the African-American victims of the killer storm that battered the Gulf Coast.
“The people down in New Orleans, they don’t care about as much!” said Obama, comparing the government’s response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
He later said that Katrina exposed the region’s poverty and suggested that the poor “need help with basic skills, how to shop, how to show up for work on time, how to wear the right clothes, how to act appropriately in an office.”
Obama’s team downplayed the video and questioned the timing of its release, so soon before the first debate, in Denver, between the President and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney,.
“[It is] a transparent attempt to change the subject from [Romney’s] comments attacking half of the American people,” said Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt, referring to the recently leaked fundraising video in which the GOP candidate derides “47 percent” of the population. read more…
