The president’s former pastor says he was offered $150,000 to shut up.
Rev. Jeremiah Wright, President Obama’s controversial pastor, is making headlines again. He famously became known nationwide in 2008 when some of his fiery sermons were made public, and Obama was forced to cut ties with him to save his campaign.
In a new and unauthorized biography of the president titled The Amateur, author Edward Klein says that Wright told him that one of Obama’s “closest friends” offered him $150,000 to not speak publicly, including from the pulpit, until after the election. Klein wrote about his interview with the firebrand preacher in an article that appeared in the New York Post on Sunday.
“Man, the media ate me alive,” he told Klein. “After the media went ballistic on me, I received an email offering me money not to preach at all until the November presidential election.”
According to Klein, Wright also said that Obama, then senator of Illinois, asked to meet him at a “secret” and “secure” place and that the two met privately at the parsonage of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.
“And one of the first things Barack said was, ‘I really wish you wouldn’t do any more public speaking until after the November election.’ He knew I had some speaking engagements lined up, and he said, ‘I wish you wouldn’t speak. It’s gonna hurt the campaign if you do that,’” Wright told Klein.
The Amateur isn’t Klein’s first book about Obama. He is co-author of The Obama Identity: A Novel (Or Is It?), which depicts Obama as a Kenyan-born, Muslim Manchurian-type candidate. Think Progress reports that Klein has in the past presented falsehoods as fact.
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