Under the headline “Ayers confirms what Obama has denied,” Aaron Klein writes in an April 7 WorldNetDaily article:
Weatherman domestic terrorist Bill Ayers is now confirming what the White House has previously denied – that he held a fundraiser in his living room for Barack Obama.
That 1995 meeting was said to have launched Obama’s political career.
Sadly for Klein, none of this is the massive scoop he portrays it as.
First, at no point does Klein quote Obama denying that he was the subject of a fundraiser at Ayers’ house — all he offers is a 2008 clip of Obama campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs denying it was a fundraiser.
Second, this is not the first time Ayers has alluded to an event for Obama at his house. In November 2011, conservative blogs were all over a similar statement by Ayers. Klein must have missed that if he thinks the latest statement was the first time Ayers addressed it, which would seem to make him a lousy reporter.
Third, Klein seems to have forgotten that this has been talked about for more than five years. Politico reported in February 2008:
“I can remember being one of a small group of people who came to Bill Ayers’ house to learn that Alice Palmer was stepping down from the senate and running for Congress,” said Dr. Quentin Young, a prominent Chicago physician and advocate for single-payer health care, of the informal gathering at the home of Ayers and his wife, Dohrn. “[Palmer] identified [Obama] as her successor.”
Obama and Palmer “were both there,” he said.
Klein actually cites Young’s statements in his article — without crediting Politico, of course and removing any reference to the date the accusation was made — but he offers no evidence that Obama ever denied this account. (Politico states that the Obama campaign did not respond to a request for a comment.)
Given the fact that nobody had denied this account at the time, it’s more than a little disingenuous for Klein to suggest that it has been consistently denied for the past five years.
Further, as Politico’s Ben Smith pointed out in 2011, the event at Ayers’ house was technically more of an introduction of Obama as a candidate than an explicit fundraiser. It’s a bit of a thin distinction, sure, but Klein simply paints Gibbs’ denial as a blanket falsehood rather than the threading of the needle it arguably was.
In summary: Klein is trying to create news where there is none by faulty, biased reporting. Anyone surprised?