President Obama is so paranoid about linking terrorists
to the Muslim faith that when French President François Hollande used the
phrase “Islamist terrorism” at a meeting in Washington, White House officials
posted their official press video with audio of the words cut out completely.
The 8-minute clip was posted
on the White House Web site and showed Hollande discussing the global terror
threat at a Nuclear Security Summit meeting with Obama and advisers Thursday.
The White House’s transcript of the event shows the
French leader declared at the 4:49 minute mark that “the roots of terrorism,
Islamist terrorism, is in Syria and in Iraq.”
But rather than include
Hollande’s remark in its entirety, the Obama administration posted footage in
which his interpreter’s English translation of the words “Islamist terrorism”
was missing.
The audio gap was first reported by the Media Research Center, a media
watchdog.
After initially posting the
video without the edits, the White House took it down and uploaded it again
with the interpreter’s voice muted, the MRC reported.
The nonprofit group reported that the White House’s
official MP3 recording of the meeting was also censored, but that the
transcript was not.
“Thanks, of course, Ministry
of Propaganda offices at WH for going ahead and simply posting the proof!” a
user wrote in a comment on the White House’s YouTube page.
Another wrote: “Nice
backtracking, White House. You tried to censor Hollande and you know it.”
Obama — who has come under
fire for refusing to say “radical Islam” or “Islamic terrorist” — made three
mentions of terrorism throughout Thursday’s meeting, uttering the phrases
“hands of terrorism,” “scourge of terrorism” and “counterterrorism.”
A White House official said
the audio gap was the result of a technical error that happened to come as
Hollande was uttering the controversial words.
“Nothing was edited out,” the official told The Post. “A
technical issue with the audio during the recording of President Hollande’s
remarks led to a brief drop in the audio recording of the English
interpretation. As soon as this was brought to our attention, we posted an
updated video online with the complete audio, which is consistent with the
written transcript.”
As of 6 p.m. Friday, the White House had posted footage
with the words “Islamic terrorism” included.
Obama has stayed away from the
phrase and others like it to avoid tying the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims to
terrorism.
He has been blasted by
Republicans for the practice, with one of his biggest critics being Ted Cruz,
who took aim at Obama after last month’s Brussels terror attacks.
“Radical Islam is at war with
us,” the Republican presidential candidate wrote on Facebook. “For over seven
years we have had a president who refuses to acknowledge this reality. And the
truth is, we can never hope to defeat this evil so long as we refuse to even
name it.”