Joseph Farah is annoyed. The editor of WorldNetDaily and prominent birther has discovered that questioning the eligibility of a presidential candidate can be a distraction.
Here’s how Farah begins his January 13 WND column:
How do these things get started?
No wonder people are so confused about the issues of the day.
I am literally deluged with emails from Americans insisting that Mitt Romney is not constitutionally eligible to be president.
It’s not true.
Really? The man whose website is so obsessed with the eligibility of Barack Obama to be president that it ignores facts and descends into the realm of absurdity is wondering how such things “get started”?
Farah continues:
Furthermore, while I remain a strong advocate of the position that Obama is not eligible for a variety of reasons, I have never made this assertion based on the fact that I detest everything for which he stands. That assertion is based on fact, on reality, on verifiable truth.
Given his willingness to overlook overwhelming evidence to the contrary, it’s difficult to believe that Farah would be such a “strong advocate” of Obama’s purported ineligibility if he did not “detest everything for which he stands.” As for Farah’s claim that his assertion “is based on fact, on reality, on verifiable truth,” this ignores reality as well. For example, a new book debunks many birther claims, and one prominent birther, Philip Berg, has shot down the WND-promoted idea that Obama is using a fake Social Security number. Curiously, WND has yet to report on either of these things, and WND’s Jerome Corsi has refused to debate the book’s author about his conclusions.
Farah then complains again that questions about Romney’s eligibility is becoming a distraction to “my team at WND”:
So can you please stop writing to me and to my team at WND with suggestions that Mitt Romney fails the constitutional eligibility test? It’s not true.
I don’t think he gets a passing grade on understanding and interpreting the Constitution, but – unfortunately, from my perspective – he passes the litmus test for serving as president.
Can we move on to more substantive issues in this campaign?
Presumably, Farah and his WND team don’t think eligibility questions about Obama are a distraction from “more substantive issues,” even though no factual basis for them exists.
(Cross-posted at Media Matters.)