Topic: Newsmax
Newsmax's favorite bitter ex-CIA agent is back again, this time given a video platform for his bitterness.
An April 22 Newsmax article by Dan Weil and Kathleen Walter features a video interview of Kent Clizbe, in which he not only denounces President Obama's actions in Libya, he goes birther:
On a separate issue, Clizbe says Americans have a right to be concerned about whether Obama was born in the United States.
“There’s a constitutional mandate that lays out exactly the qualifications for any president,” he says. “In the past, the press has served as vetters for these issues.” But this time around, the press hasn’t come through, Clizbe says.
“President Obama needs to be vetted. What exactly is in his background, who knows? But he hasn’t been vetted. The birth certificate is just one tiny issue in a much larger vetting question.”
The apparent purpose of this interview of Clizbe is to promote his upcoming book, "Willing Accomplices: How KGB Covert Influence Agents Created Political Correctness and Destroyed America." The website for the book -- which appears to be self-published; the listed publisher, Andemca Publishing, lists only his book and Clizbe as the only named contact -- rants about "Progressives' and Obama's Hate-America-First politics" and "Obama's America-Sucks Political Platform."
In the interview but not noted in the accompanying article, Clizbe asserts that "the whole political philosophy of political correctness was created by the KGB, a covert influence campaign that they began in the 1920s under Lenin, and their goal was to destroy American exceptionalism, and they did that very well." Clizbe does add that "there's no evidence that President Obama is controlled by the KGB."
Of course, in the 1920s America was hardly a world power and "American exceptionalism" had not been much of an issue at that time, so it's highly unlikely that Lenin and the KGB (which was not established until the 1950s) would concern themselves with targeting America so soon after the Russian Revolution.
A free excerpt of Clizbe's book suggests more of the Obama-hate he has previously peddled; he has, after all, perviously smeared the president as a Soviet tool. He writes in the book:
Obama is the first president to apologize repeatedly for America’s sins against foreign countries, and to speak disparagingly against the country that elected him. Obama’s cool, detached Elite attitude, loathing the “bitter clingers” of the heartland, is a living testament to the power and success of Muenzenberg’s covert influence operations.
It's strange that Newsmax would embrace such a rabidly right-wing book given that it has been trying to moderate itself over the past few years. Is Newsmax backsliding to its Clinton-era-style rage and conspiracy-mongering? Its hearty embrace of Donald Trump's birtherism suggests so.
