Cashill's Cornucopia of Obama Conspiracies

WorldNetDaily columnist Jack Cashill has a new book out in which he apparently rehashes every single Obama-related conspiracy theory, no matter how discredited.

By Terry Krepel
Posted 11/17/2020

Jack Cashill

That book, by the way, is not available at WND's online store -- as near as we can tell, the floundering operation (whose own book-publishing division has been shut down amid its severe financial problems) has not added any new products of late beyond new monthly editions of WND's sparsely read Whistleblower magazine. So Cashill must supply the Amazon link to the book in his WND columns promoting it.

The premise of the book, according to the Amazon blurb, is that "While the major media were spinning their collective fairy tale about the Obama presidency, the alternative conservative media — America’s 'samizdat' — were telling the truth."

That is manifestly false. WND spent the entirety of Barack Obama's presidency pushing the lie that the birth certificates Obama released were inaccurate or outright faked, and Cashill himself was caught falsely claiming that a photo of Obama with his grandparents was fake because Obama was Photoshopped into it when, in fact, a photo in which Obama was Photoshopped out of that he portrayed was the "real" photo is actually the fake one. (It was this column, which WND refused to tell readers a correction was made on even as it scrubbed the false information from it, that caused then-editor Joseph Farah to effectively brag about how WND publishes misinformation.)

In excerpting his book in his WND columns, Cashill has demonstrated once again why he can't be trusted. Let's look at the conspiracy theories and dubious claims about Obama Cashill rehashed at WND over the past several months.

On May 20, Cashill declared: "When the final chapter is written on Obamagate, historians will look to the April 10, 2016, as the day President Barack Obama triggered the eponymous coup." Of course, Cashill didn't tell his readers that Obamagate isn't really a thing.

In his June 3 column, Cashill complained that Obama "failed catastrophically" in trying to "ease racial tension in America," though he didn't explain why it was Obama's responsibility to do that and not anyone else's. Cashill then started ranting about Trayvon Martin -- about whom Cashill wrote a hatchet job -- and promoted a film he participated in on the death of Martin by infamous charlatan Joel Gilbert. On Aug. 16, he rehashed yet again his biased, racially tainted interpretation of the Martin case, asserting that Obama's statement that "if I had a son, he would look like Trayvon" to be "the most destructive moment of his presidency."

On June 17, Cashill irrelevantly proclaimed that the Seattle house where Obama's mother moved shortly after his birth "was located in what might be called "Greater CHAZ," just a few blocks beyond the current borders of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone," then grumbled: "Throughout the Obama years, the very same journalists who mocked "birthers" made a hash out of Obama's nativity story, the story on which he built his candidacy." Of course, Cashill doesn't mention that he was a fellow traveler of the birthers.

Cashill used his June 24 column to cast aspersions about Obama's presidential memoirs purportedly running behind schedule, adding, "Obama fans need not fret. They can learn all they need to know about President Obama by reading my book, 'Unmasking Obama: The Fight to Tell the True Story of a Failed Presidency,' which is on schedule for its Aug. 18 release." He rehashed his conspiracy theory that "Obama hasn't written any of his books himself and likely none of his speeches" -- then went into revisionist history about it.

Cashill has historically claimed that Bill Ayers actually wrote much of Obama's book "Dreams From My Father." But in his column, he altered that, stating that "In September 2008, I introduced the thesis that terrorist emeritus Bill Ayers played a major role in crafting 'Dreams'" and highlighting how biographer Christopher Andersen "confirmed Ayers's involvement."Actually, Cashill was a source for Andersen's claim, which makes it suspect circular logic; by contrast, a British professor using a software program to detect similar words and phrases between works found that it was "very implausible" that Ayers wrote Obama's book. (Needless to say, Cashill attacked the professor for debunking his pet conspiracy theory.)

Cashill rehashed his attacks on Obama and Trayvon Martin in his July 8 column, complaining that Black Lives Matter was founded by "radical ... activists" and "traces its founding "to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin's murderer, George Zimmerman," which is somehow Obama's fault. Again, Cashill blamed Obama for letting racial divisions "fester and the mayhem to explode"; again, he didn't explain why it was solely Obama's responsibility and not, say, Cashill's to do something about it.

On July 15, Cashill was ranting again about Obama, this time segueing into the hoary Benghazi conspiracy:

Lately, however, the question of Obama's whereabouts has become more literal. Where exactly is he? Where has he gone to labor away on his long overdue and overpaid memoir? Insiders, I am told, worry about his mental health and his fondness for a stiff drink.

Obama's elusiveness should not surprise. He has a habit of disappearing, and the media have a habit of not inquiring too hard into where he has gone, most memorably on the night of Sept. 11, 2012.

This led into yet another defense of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, whose inflammatory anti-Muslim film was originally believed to have sparked the attack on the Benghazi compound (it did spark protests elsewhere). Once again, Cashill portrayed Nakoula as a victim, calling him "vulnerable" because he was on parole. As usual, he didn't tell his readers that Nakoula lied to his actors about the nature of the film he was making -- some of the actors were put in danger because of Nakoula's intentional deception -- and handwaved his lengthy criminal record to portray him as being involved in nothing worse than a "check-kiting scheme." (Actually, Nakoula was using fake names and stolen identities to move money around.) Cashill suggested that Nakoula was some kind of political prisoner for making the film; in fact, he was sentenced to a year in jail after admitting that he lied to authorities and violated his parole by uploading the film to the internet.

Release date

On Aug. 18 -- the day his book was officially released -- Cashill ranted that "the mischief surrounding the passage and implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) – also known as 'Obamacare' – puts Obama in the Harding-Grant strata of scandal-plagued presidencies" and tried to make Obama's not-entirely-inaccurate statement that people can keep their doctors under the plan to be some kind of massive conspiracy.

Cashill's Aug. 20 column totally bought into the conspiracy theory that "President Barack Obama had been using an anomalous and possibly fraudulent SSN for more than twenty years." He made sure to elide the fact that releasing Obama's Social Security number as one "samizdat" member did without Obama's permission is likely illegal, despite his insistence that the random right-wing person's poking around the number was "perfectly legal." He bashed the fact-checkers at Snopes for debunking the conspiracy, huffing that it "seemed to have no greater purpose during Obama’s presidency than to kill stories potentially harmful to the president." Cashill rejected the obvious explanation -- some clerk apparently mistyped Obama's zip code so that he was given a number normally given to those who live in Connecticut rather than Hawaii, where Obama lived -- instead complaining: "Journalists who shied from learning the truth about Obama’s Social Security number were not about to ask him where he was on the night the Benghazi consulate was attacked, what he knew about the IRS war on the Tea Party, or how he came to authorize 'Fast and Furious,' let alone what role he played in protecting Hillary Clinton from prosecution or in spying on Donald Trump’s campaign."

Cashill also referenced Obama's birth certificate, "whose legitimacy may never be certified." On Aug. 26, Cashill dove into the birther issue from a different angle. He first asserted that "Barack Obama resisted sharing his birth certificate at considerable cost and very nearly to the point of political self-destruction. This much is undeniable." This is a lie; Obama released a state-generated birth certificate in 2008 and another in 2012 only after birthers like Donald Trump repeatedly pushed the issue by falsely portraying the original certificate as somehow not authentic enough. He slagged Obama's mother as once having "a crush on the eponymous Afro-Brazilian of the movie 'Black Orpheus'" -- apparently trying to dogwhistle to the more racist Obama-haters out there -- and posited that Obama was born a few months earlier than the date on his birth certificate, arguing that "the Dunham family might have claimed a home birth and called it in to the authorities in August."

In his Sept. 9 column, Cashill speculated about Obama's sexuality, based on letters he allegedly wrote to a college girlfriend in which Obama allegedly claims that "I make love to men daily, but in the imagination. My mind is androgynous to a great extent and I hope to make it more so." Cashill then lets his smutty mind run amok:

This revelation came at a good time for me. In writing my book "Unmasking Obama," I was still debating whether or not I should address the rumors of Obama's homosexuality.

There was other evidence to consider. One was Obama's adolescent relationship with CPUSA member Frank Marshall Davis, an admitted bisexual with a taste for underage prey.

[...]

Then too there was the memorable Larry Sinclair. In June 2008, at the National Press Club in Washington, Sinclair related the alleged details of a two-day coke and sex romp with the then-married Obama in 1999.

Sinclair provided dates, the name of the hotel, the name of the Muslim limo driver who arranged the assignation, the specifics of their sexual interlude, and challenged the media to follow up. They did not. Instead, as was their habit during the Obama years, they attacked the messenger.

Cashill conveniently omitted -- as he did a couple years back -- the inconvenient fact that documented conman Sinclair utterly discredited himself, offering no actual evidence to back up his claims and getting arrested after his bizarre presser on theft and forgery charges (and don't forget about his kilt-wearing lawyer).

On Sept. 16, Cashill declared that this summer's unrest following the police shootings of black people "is the America Barack Obama and Joe Biden have wrought, and it is too damn late for a beer summit to paper things over," going on to make his usual complaint that "Obama tacitly endorsed the media's transformation of Zimmerman, a Hispanic civil rights activist, into a white-supremacist killer." Cashill, of course, transformed the black teen Zimmerman killed, Trayvon Martin, into a would-be thug.

Cashill played victim in his Sept. 23 column, parlaying a one-star review of his Obama-bashing book on Amazon into a "Fahrenheit 451"-style attempt to silence him, adding: "Of course, I am hoping for more abuse, maybe a smack down from big-time firemen like the smear artists at the Media Matters for America or the 'extremist' monitors at the Southern Poverty Law Center. If truly successful, I might get a big fat 'False' from the faux fact-checkers at Snopes.com or PolitiFact.com."

They're not "smears" if it's the truth, Jack. And the truth is that Cashill has so discredited himself over the years that pretty much the only people who care about him is us, and only because he has apparently decided to go down with the WND ship.

Cashill spent his Sept. 30 column hair-splitting over Obama's words in a 2012 presidential debate with Mitt Romney over whether he called the Benghazi attack an "act of terror."

Marshall also fawned over Cashill's alleged "wry wit," adding, "We should all learn to laugh at the absurdities of America's political scene today. Humor helps keep us sane." He's clearly not going to mention that Cashill's record as a discredited conspiracy-monger precedes him and that all the "wry wit" he can muster doesn't wipe that way.

On Oct. 7, Cashill obsessed over Obama's 1981 trip to Pakistan. Despite offering no evidence whatsoever that Obama did anything scandalous or evil while there, he portrayed the trip as secret and shameful, finding conspiratorial significance in the fact that Obama's passport was breached in 2008 by an employee of a company headed at the time by John Brennan, then an Obama adviser and later CIA director. Cashill didn't mention that the employee reportedly also breached the passport of Obama's opponent, John McCain. From there, Cashill tried to apply the right wing's Clinton Death List narrative -- in which Bill and Hillary were accused of roaming the Arkansas countryside killing their political opponents -- to Obama, suggesting that he murdered anyone who tried to look further into the trip:

In his 2016 book, "Deception," Timmerman further reported that five days after the passport story broke in March 2008, Washington, D.C., police arrested, on a marijuana charge, a man with the unusual name "Leiutenant [sic] Quarles Harris Jr."

In addition to the marijuana, police found eight State Department passport applications on Harris when they busted him. According to his charging document, "Harris admitted he obtained the Passport information from a co-conspirator who works for the U.S. Department of State."

After he agreed to cooperate in the State Department investigation, the D.C. police released Harris on his own recognizance. Less than a month later, D.C. police found Harris shot dead in the front seat of his locked car, the shots having penetrated the windshield.

[...]

Granted, all the allegations I cite about Brennan are unproven. In 2013, reporter Michael Hastings, then with BuzzFeed, set out to confirm them with an exposé on Brennan, by then the head of the CIA. Hastings did not get to finish the job.

Early in the morning of June 18, 2013, Hastings sent an email to his editor: "the Feds are interviewing my 'close friends and associates.' Perhaps if the authorities arrive 'BuzzFeed GQ,' er HQ, may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices or related journalism issues."

Several hours later, Hastings was burned beyond recognition in a fiery car crash in a Los Angeles neighborhood. As they say, dead men tell no tales.

In fact, Hastings' family members say he was behaving erratically and acting in a paranoid manner before his death.

In his Oct. 15 column, Cashill huffed:

OK, the cat is out of the bag. Obama knew. According to information released recently by Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Ratcliffe, Obama's CIA Director John Brennan's own handwritten notes indicate that he briefed Obama in July 2016 about the real provenance of the Steele dossier.

In Brennan's words, the briefing dealt with the "alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services."

Instead of investigating Clinton's dirty tricks, Obama and his henchmen, Brennan most notably, pretended that the claim of Russian interference was valid. Hillary's involvement was one secret they did not leak.

Actually, that story has been discredited as Russian disinformation.

In a pre-election Oct. 28 column, Cashill added a couple shots at Joe Biden:

A few weeks ago, while out promoting my new book, "Unmasking Obama," a fellow asked the ultimate question about Barack Obama: puppet or puppeteer?

After watching Obama slouch his way toward Election Day, drawing crowds smaller than those of even Melania Trump, I am convinced the answer is "puppet."

In his prime, Obama generated dramatically more enthusiasm than does the corrupt and senile Joe Biden. That said, the obvious puppet Biden will likely get more votes than Obama did despite the fact that the strings can be seen from the cheap seats.

This has to depress Obama. Watching the puppeteers from the sidelines, Obama has to fear that he will be discarded after this election as casually as Buzz Lightyear was in "Toy Story 3."

Obama liked to think he was his own man. He wasn't. Like Biden in 2020, if not as conspicuously, Obama served his masters as a front man for the long march of global progressivism through America's institutions.

One has to wonder whose puppet Cashill is to spend so much time and energy regurgitating discredited conspiracy theories.

Based on these columns, Cashill's book appears to be nothing more than another highly speculative hit job from a longtime Obama-hater. Treat it accordingly.