Ed Klein told nearly 2,000 conservatives and libertarians who jammed the main ballroom at FreedomFest last week several shocking stories he heard while conducting the nearly 200 interviews that formed the basis of his bestselling book, The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House. But none was more gripping than what he learned during his three-hour interview with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s longtime pastor in Chicago.
“At first I had no interest in talking to Rev. Wright,” Klein told us. “But several African-Americans I spoke with said he had a story I had to hear.” Somewhat to his surprise, Wright not only agreed to meet with Klein but gave him permission to record the interview.
During their talk, Wright told Klein that Barack Obama was “steeped in Islam” when he first met him, but knew little about Christianity. “Barack and Michelle are not church people,” Wright said. “They didn’t even send their daughters to Sunday School.”
According to Klein, Trinity United Church of Christ (Wright’s mega-church with more than 8,000 black members) wasn’t the Obamas’ spiritual home; it was their political base in Chicago. Of course, once the media started exposing Wright’s hate-filled sermons and his “black liberation” theology, Obama dropped Wright like the hot potato he had become.
Wright told Klein that after the controversy erupted, he was approached by one of Obama’s closest friends and offered $150,000 if he would promise to keep his mouth shut during the 2008 election. When Wright refused, he said he got a phone call a few days later from the candidate himself, asking to meet with him privately in some “secure location.”
“I told him we didn’t need to meet in a ‘secure location,’” Wright told Klein. “I said he could just come to my home. After all, he’d been there before at least a hundred times.”
When Obama also asked him, for the good of his campaign, to refrain from controversial remarks while he ran for President, Wright said he couldn’t make that promise. He said Obama then told him, “The problem with you, Rev, is that you’ve got to tell the truth.” Wright said he replied, “That’s not a bad problem to have. Maybe you should try it.”
I doubt if anyone reading this will be surprised to learn that an Obama crony tried to bribe Obama’s long-time minister into keeping his controversial mouth shut. Of course, we know how well that worked.
Klein told his rapt audience that he offered copies of his three-hour interview with Wright to the national media. But with the exception of Sean Hannity, they all ignored it. Hey, surprise, surprise! There’s liberal bias in the mainstream media.
The author said that although his book has been on top of bestseller lists for nearly two months, he has yet to be invited on any of the major interview shows. No “Today Show,” no “Good Morning, America,” no “Charlie Rose.”
“If it weren’t for Fox News, most TV viewers would never have heard of my book,” he said. But thanks to that network, plus talk radio, the Internet, and all the other alternative news sources that have developed — like Personal Liberty Digest™ — a media blackout just doesn’t work anymore.
Another fascinating tidbit from Klein’s book is that Bill Clinton tried very hard to persuade his wife to run against Obama this year. He didn’t want to wait until 2016. A friend of the Clintons (Klein won’t say which one) quotes Bill Clinton delivering the following tirade: “I have no relationship with the President — none whatsoever. Obama doesn’t know how to be President. He doesn’t know how the world works. He’s incompetent. He’s… he’s…”
Then Klein described what happened next:
Bill’s voice was growing hoarse — he was speaking in a rough whisper — but he looked as though he could go on forever bashing Obama. And then, all at once and without warning, he stopped cold. He bit his lower lip and scanned the faces in the room. He was plainly gratified to see that his audience was spellbound. They were waiting for the politician par excellence to deliver his final judgment on the 44th President of the United States.
Then, according to the friend, Bill Clinton said: “Barack Obama is an amateur!”
Obama is not an amateur at running, God knows. With a teleprompter in front of him, he’s one of the most gifted and eloquent campaigners this country has ever seen.
But when it comes to serving as President and commander in chief, Ed Klein doesn’t mince words. Obama is not only one of the most divisive and radical people to ever occupy the White House, but he is a dangerous amateur at the job.
“Barack Obama is temperamentally unsuited to be President of the United States or commander in chief,” Klein told us. “He is inept in judgment, flawed in management, and lacking in leadership. He repeatedly makes errors that hurt our economy and harm our national security.”
And then the bestselling author hammered home his conclusion: “Barack Obama’s bumbling amateurism and radical ideology are a toxic combination for our country.”
Most of the speakers at this year’s FreedomFest who made a prediction about the November elections said they expect Obama to lose — a prediction that was greeted with a hearty round of applause every time it was uttered.
Klein said he wasn’t so sure. Obama’s team may be inept at leading the country, the bestselling author said, but they are ruthless, brilliant and unscrupulous at running a campaign. They will pull out all the stops to get their man re-elected.
“Those guys in Chicago know how to run a dirty, effective campaign,” he said.
If they succeed, the country will be in for a very dangerous time.
“If Obama is re-elected,” Klein said, “there will be nothing to stop him. He will be even more aggressive.” And he won’t hesitate to use edicts, regulations and even more czars to force changes down our throats — no matter what Congress does.
Obama’s goal, the author is convinced, is nothing less than to convert the United States into “a European-style socialist state.”
Klein’s bestselling book confirms what a lot of us already suspected. Too bad all this wasn’t known four years ago. If it had been, he has no doubt Obama would never have been elected.
What should we do about it now? The bottom line is simple, he says. “This guy must be defeated in 2012.” His book should help do the job.
Until next time, keep some powder dry.
Chip Wood was the first news editor of The Review of the News and also wrote for American Opinion, our two predecessor publications. He is now the geopolitical editor of Personal Liberty Digest, where his Straight Talk column appears weekly. This article first appeared in PersonalLiberty.com and has been reprinted with permission.
