Obama Is From Kenya Claim Retracted By News Network [Video]
Did MSNBC go birther at least temporarily?
The conspiracy minded birther movement is a much scorned cohort that believes Barack Obama was born outside of the U.S. and therefore constitutionally ineligible to serve as president. Birthers also believe that the president’s Hawaiian birth certificate released by the White House in 2011 is fake. Legal challenges to Obama’s legitimacy as president on grounds that he isn’t a “natural born citizen” have gone nowhere, however.
On MNSBC, the cable news network that generally cheerleads for Team Obama 24-7, White House correspondent Chris Jansing, herself a former MSNBC anchor, inexplicably stated that the president is “from Kenya.”
In covering the U.S-Africa summit in D.C. this past week, Jansing was responding to the notion that Obama wants to make improved relations with the African continent part of his legacy. Said Jansing:
Yeah, the fact that he’s from Kenya. And the fact that when he was elected, there were expectations on the African continent that he would do great things for them. This is a concerted effort by this administration to get American companies to invest…”
Twitter immediately exploded with outrage about Jansing’s Obama Kenya birthplace remark as compiled by Twitchy.
Perhaps because of the outcry on social media, Jansing came back on the air about 10 minutes later (see embed below) with this retraction about the Obama birthplace-related slip of the tongue:
Just obviously to clarify, I misspoke at the top before. It’s obviously the president’s father who is from Kenya….
Separately, Congressman Steny Hoyer made a cringeworthy alleged joke (see embed below) in a speech before African CEOs at the summit. The Maryland Democrat who holds the position of minority whip in the House — the second ranking position in that chamber behind Nancy Pelosi — told his audience that “First of all, let me tell my friends from Africa, I do not whip people. And if you watch House of Cards, it is not accurate.”
Commenting on Hoyer’s gaffe, the Washington Examiner declared that “If Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., were a Republican, the networks would be giving the following statement wall-to-wall coverage, and the House minority whip would be forced to go on a weeklong apology tour to convince America he’s not a hugely ignorant racist.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNgi74SBXbs
Not to be outdone, as The Inquisitr previously reported, Vice President Joe Biden informed the assembled African dignitaries at the summit that Africa is a country rather than a continent.
Against the backdrop of Chris Jansing’s Kenya birthplace gaffe, do you agree or disagree with the Washington Post ‘s assertion that “The birther movement needs only the slightest bit of encouragement to ignite itself, and the words of an NBC News reporter — all clarifications aside — could well be enough.”
