One big reason why WorldNetDaily is currently in a perpetual state of financial crisis is that it squandered what little journalistic credibility it had in a war on Barack Obama, a key component of which was pushing the biggest fake-news story of the past decade: that Obama was ineligible to be president because he was not born in the U.S. and that his birth certificates were forgeries.
For the second time this year despite Obama long being out of office, WND took a dip in the birther cesspool in an anonymously written July 22 article:
Why do so many Americans still believe Barack Obama was born in Kenya?
Maybe because he keeps insisting it’s so.
He did again last week, while visiting his ancestral homeland of Kogelo.
Participating in the opening of Sauti Kuu Resource Center, a youth facility built by his half-sister, Auma Obama, he said: “Now, three years ago, I visited Kenya as the first sitting American president to come from Kenya. When I was president it was a little bit harder to get up here cause my plane didn’t fit the tarmac up here.”
WND is deliberately misquoting Obama. He did not say he was born in Kenya, he said that he “c[a]me from Kenya” — not the same thing, and an indisputable fact given the Kenyan heritage of his father (though WND has occasionally insisted that Obama’s real father is Frank Marshall Davis).
Yet WND still want to relitigate the whole birther thing by repeating false claims by others that Obama was born in Kenya: “So, which is it – native-born son of Kenya, native-born son of Hawaii or native-born citizen of the world?”
And WND seems a little bitter that its birther obsession ruined it:
While allies of the former president have been quick to blame his political enemies for continuing to plant doubt about Obama’s constitutional eligibility to occupy the White House, obviously not all the assertions being made come from so-called “birthers,” a term of derision used by his friends and supporters.
In fact, some of his friends and supporters in Kenya still insist he was born there.
Even Michelle Obama referred to Kenya as “his home country.”
Had WND chosen to act like the “news” operation it claims to be and honestly reported the entire truth about Obama’s eligibility instead of promoting liars, charlatans and opportunists like Jerome Corsi, Joe Arpaio and Joel Gilbert, it wouldn’t have to be so bitter about being dismissed as the birther obsessive it is
Because it didn’t report honestly, WND continues to circle the drain and Joseph Farah is begging for money. Again. (More on that soon.)