Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has been dragged kicking and screaming into the Cruz birther story. now, it's effectively being forced to take a stand.
Joseph Farah spends his Jan. 15 column ranting about a Daily Beast article linking WND to Cruz birtherism. Farah does have a point for once, despite his notoriously thin skin; the Daily Beast does falsely portray WND's perfunctory reporting on Cruz birtherism as support for it, ignoring that WND has adamantly refused to treat Cruz birther like it did Obama birtherism -- namely, admit that by its own standards Cruz is as ineligible to be president as it claims Obama is.
Then, Farah rants about how far he's running from Cruz birtherism -- and still perpetuates Obama birther lies:
No one at WND – not one single employee or executive – is supporting [Daily Beast reporter Gideon] Resnick’s elusive “cause” to declare Ted Cruz ineligible. In fact, I told him that in no uncertain terms. What I said to him was the following: I think Ted Cruz acted admirably in handling the potential for confusion on this matter – by releasing his birth certificate before announcing his candidacy, explaining the circumstances of his birth and citizenship status. It stood in marked contrast to what Barack Obama did beginning in 2008.
Obama, I explained, was the original birther. When it was convenient for him to label himself as “born in Kenya,” he did so – for many years. We know he did it when he was marketing his first book and for years afterward. We don’t know if he used it to be accepted to Occidental, Columbia or Harvard, because he refused to release any college records. He made a point of not releasing his birth certificate during the campaign or for years after he became president. It became a national joke. In effect, he mocked the constitutional requirement, even after his opponent in 2008, John McCain, was investigated for his own status as a “natural born citizen” because of his birth in Panama. McCain’s eligibility was investigated by the New York Times and eventually the U.S. Senate, which approved his eligibility, with Obama’s vote.
Farah's lying when he claims Obama didn't release his birth certificate while running for president; Obama released a certificate of live birth, which is what Hawaii routinely issued and which is legally binding, no matter how much WND has claimed otherwise. The issue became a "national joke" in part because of WND's obsession with it and refusal to publish any evidence that discredits its birther conspiracies.
Farah, it seems, just can't stop lying about how much of a (Obama) birther he is:
Finally, after 17 paragraphs, the Beastie boy typist informs his readers, if they got this far, that I actually like Ted Cruz, but not before he labels me a “purveyor of conspiracy theories about Obama’s birth in Kenya.” Again, to show you how egregious this insulting lie is, I began our conversation by telling Resnick that I was talking to him reluctantly because MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was still going off on her TV show accusing me of claiming Obama was born in Kenya. I explained that in the hundreds of thousands of words I had carefully written on this subject and in the hundreds of interviews and speeches I gave, never once did I say Obama was born in Kenya. I was attempting to make sure he wouldn’t step on this one land mine, but he did – obviously intentionally.
As we point out every time Farah tells this lie, Farah has at least twice promoted a discredited claim that Obama's grandmother said he was born in Kenya -- not to mention WND's embrace of a fake Obama "birth certificate" claiming he was born in Kenya.
Farah also takes offense to something else the Daily Beast suggests, that WND's publication and promotion of a new book by Rafael Cruz, Ted Cruz's father, is an expression of support for Cruz's candidacy; he huffs that "my motives are impugned." Given that Farah's refusal to apply Obama birtherism to Cruz birtherism is a clear indication that his motive in Obama birtherism was to destroy him instead of enforce the Constitution, there's good reason to question, and impugn, Farah's motives.
Finally, Farah's ranting about how unfair the Daily Beast article is -- although he does have a point -- is rather rich considering WND's own abysmal journalistic standards. What goes around comes around.
And throughout all of this, Farah refuses to admit the obvious: that by WND's own Obama birther standards, Cruz is not eligible, or that two years ago he declared that he didn't think Cruz was eligible. Talk about dishonest.
