Monica Crowley, Trump Pick For Treasury Department Spokeswoman, Claimed Barack Obama Was ‘Loyal To Islam’
In December 2016, President Donald Trump picked former radio host and Fox News contributor Monica Crowley to be the senior director of strategic communications for the National Security Council. Crowley was effectively forced to withdraw herself from consideration after CNN‘s KFile team found that she had plagiarized her doctoral thesis and her book.
Crowley is now Trump’s pick for the top spokeswoman job at the Treasury Department, and CNN’s team of investigative journalists has uncovered more information about the former radio host. A review of Crowley’s social media activity and blog posts reveals that she had pushed racist conspiracy theories about former president Barack Obama.
Like many other figures on the American right — including Donald Trump — Crowley spread the “birther” conspiracy theory, which alleges that Obama faked his birth certificate.
“If the birth certificate were never a big deal, why did No Drama Obama wait nearly 3 years before releasing it?” she reportedly asked in a 2011 blog post.
The birther conspiracy theory, about which Crowley wrote extensively and in multiple blog posts, are merely the tip of the iceberg. Trump’s latest appointee reportedly spread other, similar conspiracy theories about the former president, echoing fringe far-right figures.
In a 2015 column titled “Obama’s Two Faces of Islam,” Crowley called Obama an “Islamic community organizer,” accusing him of “conforming U.S. policy to Islam and Sharia.” In the column, she also accused the former president of developing a “nefarious strategy” to promote “Sharia and Islamic statehood,” and benefit Iran in order to destroy Israel.
Trump has picked Monica Crowley, a former Fox News pundit, plagiarizer, and pusher of Obama conspiracy theories like birtherism, to be the Treasury Department’s new spokesperson pic.twitter.com/IbObRnCeLt
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) July 19, 2019
Between 2009 and 2015, Crowley authored a number of blog posts and columns in which she made similar allegations, CNN wrote. The commentator frequently suggested that Obama was secretly a Muslim looking to make the United States conform to Sharia law.
“It may not come as a shock that he appears loyal to Islam. The question is: can he be both loyal to Islam and loyal to the United States?” she asked in one of the columns.
In a 2009 piece, Crowley made a number of shocking claims about Obama, accusing the then-president of being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a terrorist sympathizer.
Trump Pick for Treasury Spokesperson Was a Birther, Believed Obama Was a Muslim https://t.co/0Dg5n2eAeS pic.twitter.com/tPDxT4wKLN
— Intelligencer (@intelligencer) July 26, 2019
Trump’s pick for Treasury Department spokesperson laid out an elaborate theory, writing that Obama had wanted to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp because he had sympathies toward radical Islamic terrorists.
“Barack Obama insisted on being sworn in as president with his full name, Barack Hussein Obama,” she wrote, omitting the fact that presidents are usually sworn in using their full names.
“One of his very first things he did as president was to order the closure of the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,” Crowley added, apparently failing to mention that Obama had — much like human rights activists — campaigned on closing the facility infamous for abuse and torture.
