In an interview aired this morning on the Big Talker (WPHT, 1210-AM), Barack Obama defended his Chicago church, distanced himself further from its former pastor, and spoke about going after Osama bin Laden.
"This is not a crackpot church," the Democratic presidential candidate said of Trinity United Church of Christ. ". . . This is a pillar of the community, and if you go there on Easter, this Easter Sunday, and you sat down there in the pew, you would think this is just like any other church."
Questions have been raised about the Illinois senator's place of worship because its former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., has called the country the "U.S. of KKK A" and has denounced American policies as corrupt and racist.
Obama told WPHT host Michael Smerconish these isolated excerpts give a distorted picture.
"The ones that are most offensive are ones that I never knew about until they were reported on," he said during the interview, which was taped Friday night and played back at 7:30 a.m. today. ". . . I don't want to suggest that somehow, the loops you have been seeing typified services all the time. But that is the danger of the YouTube era. It doesn't excuse what he said. But it does give it some perspective."
Obama, in discussing Wright, also pointed out that "Bill Clinton invited him to the White House when he was having his personal crises."
A photograph of President Clinton with Wright appeared on the New York Times' Web site Friday, with the note: "On Thursday night, the Obama campaign, to shift the spotlight to the Clintons, provided The New York Times with a picture of Mr. Wright and President Bill Clinton at the White House in 1998 at a breakfast meeting with religious leaders hours before the Starr report on the Monica Lewinsky scandal was made public. The campaign also provided a letter Mr. Clinton sent to Mr. Wright the next month thanking Mr. Wright for a 'kind message' and saying he was touched by his prayers."
Smerconish, who wrote about Obama in his weekly Inquirer column yesterday, also discussed the failure to find Osama bin Laden.
Smerconish: "Pakistan . . . it looks like for six-and-a-half years we've been outsourcing the hunt for bin Laden to a guy [President Musharraf of Pakistan] with no motivation to get him. Do you agree with my assessment?"
Obama: "Absolutely. You may be aware of the fact that I made a speech in August, you remember that I got criticized . . .
Smerconish: "Not by me, Senator, I applauded you."
