RezkoWatch FactChecker: Klein: Obama, Farrakhan grace cover of Wright's magazine

Several times, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)'s face has graced the cover the Trumpet, an "anti-American magazine" run by Rev. Jeremiah Wright, pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, Aaron Klein, Jerusalem bureau chief for World Net Daily, wrote May 14, 2008. On one cover, Sen. Obama appears "alongside Nation of Islam chief Louis Farrakhan."

Issues of Wright's Trumpet magazine reportedly have suggested America was guilty of genocide in Africa, decried the Fourth of July as the "national holiday of the dominant culture," referred to America as a "Diaspora" for blacks, repudiated American patriotism, and celebrated suggestions the Bush administration knew about the 9-11 attacks before they were carried out.

"It seems inconceivable that, in 20 years, Obama would never have picked up a copy of Trumpet. ...Obama himself graced the cover...There can be no mistaking it. What did Barack Obama know and when did he know it? Everything. Always," writes Stanley Kurtz in a lengthy expose of Wright's magazine at The Weekly Standard.

Bizzyblog, a blog focusing on the business world, found three cover images of TRUMPET MAGAZINE THAT FEATURE Obama. One featured Obama WITH HIS HAND AROUND WRIGHT'S SHOULDERS. Another was a montage of faces, including Obama, Wright, Farrakhan, Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad and other black notables, such as Rosa Parks and even O.J. Simpson attorney Johnny Cochran.

"Notice who's missing? Martin Luther King, Jr," posted the Little Green Footballs blog.

Wright founded Trumpet magazine and serves as the publication's CEO with his daughter, Jeri, in the position of publisher/editor-in-chief. Trumpet went national in 2006 and reportedly has an audience larger than 100,000.

"Glance through even a single issue of Trumpet, and Wright's radical politics are everywhere--in the pictures, the headlines, the highlighted quotations, and above all in the articles themselves," writes Kurtz, who is also a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Kurtz went through one-years worth of Trumpet issues and said he found in the 2006 archives that controversial views expressed by Wright in sound-bytes from his sermons were reinforced in detail throughout the magazine.

Many of Wright's defenders had claimed some of the pastor's anti-American, anti-Israel, black supremacist statements were taken out of context.

Obama himself previously numerous times stated he was not aware of some of Wright's ideology when he attended the Trinity United Church of Christ for nearly twenty years. Wright served as Obama's spiritual adviser.

"Obama must have long been aware of his pastor's political radicalism. A careful reading of nearly a year's worth of Trumpet Newsmagazine makes it next to impossible to conclude otherwise," writes Kurtz.

Kurtz points to Obama's expressed outrage after last month's National Press Club address when Wright defended Farrakhan and praised him as "one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century ... that's what I think about him."

Aside from gracing one cover of Wright's magazine alongside Obama, Farrakhan's face was also on the cover of a special November/December 2007 double issue announcing Wright's Empowerment Award which had been given that year to the Nation of Islam head. The magazine also praised Farrakhan as a 20th- and 21st-century "giant."

Kurtz writes Trumpet preaches a black liberation theology, typically refering to American blacks as "Africans living in the Western Diaspora." The magazine opposes black "assimilation." Articles have expressed displeasure with Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas, and Colin Powell.

The magazine in which Obama was repeatedly featured abhors American patriotism.

"Columbus Day is a day of rage for Wright. Calling Columbus a racist slave trader, Wright excoriates the holiday as 'a national act of amnesia and denial,' part of the 'sick and myopic arrogance called Western History,'" notes Kurtz.

Trumpet featured an article by Wright that claimed Africans really discovered America, citing as evidence a book that has been largely discredited.

The July, 2006 issue of Trumpet slams the Fourth of July as "the national holiday of the dominant culture."

Kurtz notes that issue featured an article by a Rev. Reginald Williams Jr. that called July 4th "nothing more than a day off work and a time for some good barbeque to the millions of African Americans who suffer and have suffered under the policies of this government and this country."

One issue of Trumpet defended former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney's claim the Bush administration was aware of the 9/11 plot before it was perpetuated.

A column in the magazine, titled, "The Beloved Cynthia McKinney" complains McKinney was "tarred and feathered in the press" for raising questions about possible government foreknowledge of 9/11, Kurtz found.

That column stated the "crimes of 9/11," are "not only unsolved, but covered up by both Democrats and Republicans."

A central theme of Trumpet seems to be that the U.S. is a racist, criminal country.

"Do you see God as a God who approves of Americans taking other people's countries? Taking other people's women? Raping teenage girls and calling it love (as in Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemmings)?" rages one article discovered by Kurtz.

Another blames Africa's problems on the U.S. and the West, claiming they are withholding aid. Screams one piece: "Some analysts would go so far as to even call what [the United States, the G-8, and multinational corporations] are doing [in Africa] genocide!"

The Obama campaign did not immediately return a WND request for comment about whether Obama read any issues of Trumpet or was aware his face was featured on several of the magazine's covers, including once with Farrakhan.

Kurtz is convinced Obama realized Wright's ideology long ago.

"It is simply inconceivable that in 20 years' time someone as sharp as Obama did not grasp the intensely political themes repeated in so much of what Wright says and does," wrote Kurtz.

Rev. Louis Farrakhan on Sen. Barack Obama, March 4, 2008


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