Topic: Newsmax
Wayne Allyn Root has peddled a lot of anti-Obama paranoia in his Newsmax columns, making one wonder whether the guy who wrote the book "The Conscience of a Libertarian" has any sort of conscience at all. He does so again in a Jan. 20 column in which Root peddles yet another unproven anti-Obama conspiracy in arguing that Mitt Romney shouldn't release his tax returns until Obama releases his college transcripts.
Root declares that since he and Obama attended Columbia University at the same time, "I’m Obama’s college classmate," yet :"I never met Obama. Never saw him. Never even heard of him. And not one of my friends in the Class of '83 ever met him, saw him, or heard of him." Given that Columbia is a very large university -- currently more than 20,000 students -- that's not as surprising as Root makes it out to be.
Root adds: "The Wall Street Journal reported in 2008 that Fox News randomly called 400 of our Columbia classmates and never found one who had ever met Obama. Strange set of circumstances, don’t you think?" But that same Journal editorial quotes Obama's Columbia roommate -- thus undercutting Root's argument. Nevertheless, he asks, "why do his classmates at Columbia not remember Obama? Was he a ghost? Did he never show up at class?"
As FactCheck.org points out, it's "absolutely untrue" that nobody remembers Obama attending Columbia.
After speculating that Obama was hiding "bad grades" yet managed to get into major universities and Harvard Law School, Root goes off the conspiracy deep end:
Fourth, I’ve heard it rumored that Obama got a leg up by being admitted to Columbia as a foreign exchange student. Is that true? Did he hold a passport from Indonesia? Did he receive easier admission by portraying himself as a foreigner? Did he receive financial aid as a foreign student — something not available to true-blue American classmates like me?
I asked one of my lawyer buddies to call Columbia U. and ask the simple question, “Can foreigners get aid to go to college at Columbia?” The answer, “Yes, we have lots of aid for foreign students. They might be able to get their entire tuition paid and go to Columbia for free.”
So did Obama portray himself as a foreigner to get easy admission and a free ride? He was raised in Indonesia. Did his mother ever change him back to a U.S. citizen? Or was this all too easy because he still had Indonesian citizenship and passport? If so, is he qualified to be president of the United States today? I don’t know. But shouldn’t someone in the media be interested in asking these questions?
As Snopes details, the never-substantiated claim that Obama passed himself off as a foreigner to obtain scholarhip money for college comes from an anti-Obama email proven to be fraudulent.
In asserting that nobody has "asked these questions," Rroot is deliberately ignoring the fact that people did ask these questions -- and found nothing to support them.
With such anti-Obama paranoia and willingness to spread discredited falsehoods about him, Root really should be writing for WorldNetDaily.
