Jeremiah Wright’s Trumpet

Jeremiah Wright founded Trumpet Newsmagazine in 1982 as a “church newspaper” primarily for his own congregation, but apparently also for others in need of regular doses of radical politics sugarcoated with biblical references. Stanley Kurtz reviewed the 2006 issues of the magazine for his Weekly Standard article “Jeremiah Wright’s ‘Trumpet.'”Would Barack Obama have been familiar with its contents? Kurtz surmises:

It seems inconceivable that, in 20 years, Obama would never have picked up a copy of Trumpet. In fact, Obama himself graced the cover at least once (although efforts to obtain that issue from the publisher or Obama’s interview with the magazine from his campaign were unsuccessful).

Kurtz found evidence of Wright’s regard for Louis Farrakhan in a recent issue of the magazine:

Farrakhan’s picture was on the cover of a special November/December 2007 double issue, along with an announcement of the Empowerment Award [to Farrakhan] and Wright’s praise of Farrakhan as a 20th- and 21st-century “giant.” Wright’s words about Farrakhan were almost identical to those that, just four months later, led a supposedly shocked Obama to repudiate Wright.

Kurtz did not find any articles on 9/11 with the “chickens coming home to roost” theme. He found something worse:

[O]ne remarkable piece defended then-congress-woman Cynthia McKinney’s suspicion that the Bush administration knew about the 9/11 attacks before they happened. This column, “The Beloved Cynthia McKinney” (illustrated with pictures of McKinney in model-like poses), decries the fact that McKinney was “tarred and feathered in the press” for raising questions about possible government foreknowledge of 9/11. The “crimes of 9/11,” it darkly announces, are “not only unsolved, but covered up by both Democrats and Republicans.”

You had probably already guessed this, but Kurtz finds:

Trumpet provides a rounded picture of Wright’s views, and what it shows unmistakably is that the now-infamous YouTube snippets from Wright’s sermons are authentic reflections of his core political and theological beliefs. It leaves no doubt that his religion is political, his attitude toward America is bitterly hostile, and he has fundamental problems with capitalism, white people, and “assimilationist” blacks. Even some of Wright’s famed “good works,” and his moving “Audacity to Hope” sermon, are placed in a disturbing new light by a reading of Trumpet.

Kurtz concludes:

There can be no mistaking it. What did Barack Obama know and when did he know it? Everything. Always.

What are we to make of this with respect to Obama? Except insofar as one can deduce the inauthenticity of Obama’s surprise over Wright’s views from Kurtz’s analysis, Kurtz stops short of answering that question. It is nevertheless the only one that matters.

Via Hugh Hewitt.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses