Audio from New York Times bestselling author Edward Klein’s interview with Rev. Jeremiah Wright indicates that the controversial pastor thinks President Barack Obama has become a liar since running for president.
Klein has reported in his forthcoming book “The Amateur” that Obama’s close friend Eric Whitaker offered Wright $150,000 to stay silent during Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Wright, an infamous weight on Obama’s White House aspirations, refused Whitaker’s offer, according to Klein.
On Wednesday night, Klein released audio from his interview with Wright on Sean Hannity’s Fox News television program. In the audio, Wright is heard saying he has a “box” containing lots of sensitive information and documents including an email Whitaker purportedly sent to one of Wright’s associates – an attempt to buy Wright’s silence until Obama was elected in November 2008.
Wright said that, in the box, there is “[a]n email offering me money not to preach anything between the explosion of the media the first week in March and the November election from one of his friends [Whitaker].”
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When Wright refused Whitaker’s offer, according to Klein, then-Sen. Barack Obama went to meet with him. In the audio from his interview with Klein, Wright said Obama “did not,” like Whitaker, offer him any money to stay quiet. But Wright said Obama pleaded with him to stay out of the spotlight.
Wright said, too, that when Obama came to meet with him, “he was confident, he was very hopeful [about getting elected to the presidency]. But he saw me as a deterrent.”
“One more thing he said to me that day, he said, ‘You know what your problem is?’ I said, ‘What’s my problem?’” Wright added.
According to Wright, Obama told him his “problem” is “You have to tell the truth.”
After playing that audio clip on his show, Hannity asked Klein if it’s correct to view that as Wright calling Obama a “liar.” Klein said it is.
“He [Wright] said to me numerous times during this interview that there was a Barack Obama that I knew before he ran for president — not a bad guy, he wanted to stay home with his family, tuck them in at night — and then something happened when he ran for president,” Klein said. “He completely changed.”
Klein said he thinks Wright is talking now, despite the potential disastrous political consequences his comments may have, because he feels like the “Obama campaign” made him a “pariah.”
“Everywhere he goes, people who recognize him come up to him and say ‘how could you do that? How could you say those things on that platform in your church?’” Klein said. “I think he wants to set the record straight.”
