C.J. Pearson: Teen Obama-Basher Lied About POTUS Blocking Him On Twitter, Conservative Site Reports
C.J. Pearson is only 13-years-old, but he has skyrocketed to national fame this year thanks to a series of YouTube videos in which the precocious, and extremely conservative, youngster rants against President Barack Obama — the latest in the series going online September 16.
Pearson’s new video, titled “Dear Mr. President and Ahmed,” created excitement in conservative circles as the well-spoken teenager denounced Obama for inviting another teen, Ahmed Mohamed, to the White House after the Texas youth was arrested for bringing a homemade electronic clock to school — a device which school officials and police apparently assumed was am explosive device.
In the video, Pearson repeated the popular conservative talking point accusing Obama of hypocrisy for inviting the Texas teen to meet the president, but failing to invite the families of slain police officers.
On his YouTube page, Pearson captioned the video with the non-sequitir, “Does every Muslim that can build a clock gets a presidential invitation?”
In an earlier video directed at Obama, Pearson told the president, “You don’t love America. If you loved America, you would call ISIS what it is… if you loved America, President Obama, you wouldn’t try to take away what hard-working Americans have worked for their entire lives.”
But after his latest YouTube posting, which garnered nearly 2 million views, Pearson made what appeared to be a damning claim against Obama.
The YouTube star asserted that Obama — or whoever runs the presidents official Twitter account — had blocked him on the micro-blogging social media platform, a move that would prevent the president and his representatives from receiving Pearson’s tweets.
The implication, presumably, was that Obama was so sensitive to criticism that he would rather simply block it out than pay attention to voices that opposed him. The White House, through Assistant Press Secretary Frank Benenati, flatly denied Pearson’s claim.
Public Service Announcement: Nobody is or has ever been blocked from the @POTUS twitter account
— Frank Benenati (@Benenati44) September 23, 2015
There was one other problem with Pearson’s claim. According to an investigation by the conservative site The Blaze — a site founded by ultra-conservative commentator and former Fox News personality Glenn Beck — Pearson’s claim was simply not true.
In fact the supposed message from the White House declaring Pearson’s account “blocked” was itself a forgery, The Blaze found.
“First, Twitter users aren’t permitted to follow accounts that block them, yet Pearson could be seen following Obama’s account moments after making the claim he was blocked,” wrote Blaze reporter Oliver Darcy on Thursday.
Darcy went in to dissect the “blocked” message purportedly from the White House, only to find that the image itself was “a copy of one uploaded online months ago.”
The original posting was also what Darcy described as “a digitally manipulated photo.” In other words, a forgery.
The full report from The Blaze, demonstrating the inconsistencies in the image that indicate it to be a fabrication can be accessed at this link.
Pearson did not explicitly deny that his claim of being blocked by the White House was phony — but he did say that he would “stand by my word,” and he lashed out at the reporter who uncovered the alleged scam, denouncing Darcy’s report in advance as “a hit on me.”
“I choose to stand by my word. While the article will be incriminating, all we have in politics is our word and I stand by it. Nevertheless, I’m disappointed in @theblaze.”
But as it turned out, his fellow conservatives were just as disappointed in Pearson for perpetrating the hoax in an apparent attempt to raise his profile to even greater heights than he was able to reach with YouTube video rants alone.
Another prominent teen conservative, 17-year-old Benji Backer who said that he had previously advised and collaborated with Pearson, now denounced him, declaring that “CJ lied to me. Numerous times. And many people I know and love. That’s when I knew there was a problem.”
Backer accused Pearson of attempting to grow “his brand” at the expense of his credibility, according to a Washington Post report on the debacle.
The “blocking” incident was not the first time that Pearson alleged that powerful figured were trying to silence him. Earlier this year, he claimed that Facebook had deleted his account after he posted one of his anti-Obama videos. In fact, Facebook requires users to be 13-years-old at minimum, and Pearson was only 12 when he posted the video, leading to the action by Facebook.
But once C.J. Pearson turned 13, his Facebook account was up and running again.
[Images: Facebook]
