Obama defends Rev. Wright as 'supremely gifted preacher,' hits Loeffler's 'crazy' attacks on Warnock
From WWW.FOXNEWS.COM
Former President Barack Obama in an appearance on "The Breakfast Club" radio show on Wednesday said that attacks by Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler against her runoff opponent Raphael Warnock over his connection with Rev. Jeremiah Wright are "crazy stuff" as he defended Wright as a "supremely gifted preacher."
Obama appeared on the popular radio show and podcast to promote his book "A Promised Land," which details much of his presidency, including his 2008 presidential campaign during which his connection to Wright became an issue. Wright has a history of controversial comments, including a sermon in which he said "God damn America" when referencing racial injustice.
Further, after 9/11 he said that "America’s chickens are coming home to roost" and after Obama's inauguration blamed "them Jews" for his inability to talk to the president, according to NBC, before adding, "[h]e's a politician; I'm a pastor. He's got to do what politicians do."
Obama heaped praise on Wright on Wednesday when asked about his relationship with the pastor by "The Breakfast Club" hosts, who have a reputation for being unafraid to get into hot-button cultural issues – earlier this year they pushed President-elect Joe Biden on race issues during an interview.
"I wanted to ask you something about Rev. Jeremiah Wright from in your book because you've addressed it and Michelle Obama has addressed it. Do you think that in today's climate the comments and the speeches that Jeremiah Wright gave would have been looked at in the same way where you would have had to distance yourself from him?" co-host Angela Yee asked.
"It's an interesting thing ... Rev. Wright is an example of somebody who – supremely gifted preacher, Trinity United Church of Christ obviously outside Chicago had an amazing ministry, still does. And I was very close to a lot of people in that congregation as well as Rev. Wright," Obama said.
He added that he believes a lot of Wright's more controversial comments have been taken out of context.
"In national politics, if you can take out a bunch of sound bites that say 'God damn America,' even if the context of it is prophetic and biblical and he's trying to describe you know how somebody might feel – he wasn't promoting the notion that God was damning America," Obama said. "He was making a point that if you looked at slavery and discrimination you could see the conclusion of people feeling that there was not an alignment with Christian values and America. But if you see a two-minute sound bite, trying to explain that is too complicated."
Obama went on to explain that the experience of Black people is not the same as the experience of much of the country, which made it important for him to manage how he was communicating with voters and legislators. As an example, the former president mentioned his comment after a controversial arrest that police "acted stupidly," as something that would not be nearly as contentious in 2020 as it was at the time.
Later in the interview, the Georgia Senate races came up, with Obama advocating for Georgians to vote for the Democratic candidates in the Jan. 5 runoffs, which will decide which p... (Read more)
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