Anti-Obama Film May be a Hit, but it’s ‘Facts’ are Shady at Best

*Dang, the attacks on President Obama are relentless.

As we’ve pointed out in recent days one of the more interesting is a new film written and narrated by conservative scholar Dinesh D’Souza.

“2016: Obama’s America” argues that Obama was heavily influenced by what D’Souza calls the “anti-colonial” beliefs of his father, Barack Obama Sr., a Kenyan academic who was largely absent from the president’s life.

However, a new AP article points how muddy the facts are in the film

In Kenya, D’Souza interviews Philip Ochieng, a lifelong friend of the president’s father, who claims the elder Obama was “totally anti-colonial.” Ochieng also discloses some of his own political views, complaining about U.S. policy in Afghanistan and Iraq and saying the U.S. refuses to “tame” Israel, which he calls a “Trojan horse in the Middle East.” D’Souza seems to suggest that if a onetime friend of Obama’s late father holds those opinions, so too must the president himself.

D’Souza then goes through a list of actions Obama has taken as president to support his thesis. Many of them don’t hold water:

— D’Souza rightly argues that the national debt has risen to $16 trillion under Obama. But he never mentions the explosion of debt that occurred under Obama’s predecessor, Republican George W. Bush, nor the 2008 global financial crisis that provoked a shock to the U.S. economy.

— D’Souza says Obama is “weirdly sympathetic to Muslim jihadists” in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He does not mention that Obama ordered the raid that killed Osama bin Laden and the drone strikes that have killed dozens of terrorists in the region.

—D’Souza wrongly claims that Obama wants to return control of the Falkland Islands from Britain to Argentina. The U.S. refused in April to endorse a final declaration on Argentina’s claim to the islands at the Summit of the Americas, provoking criticism from other Latin American nations.

—D’Souza says Obama has “done nothing” to impede Iran’s nuclear ambitions, despite the severe trade and economic sanctions his administration has imposed on Iran to halt its suspected nuclear program. Obama opposes a near-term military strike on Iran, either by the U.S. or Israel, although he says the U.S. will never tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran.

— D’Souza says Obama removed a bust of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill from the Oval Office because Churchill represented British colonialism. White House curator William Allman said the bust, which had been on loan, was already scheduled to be returned before Obama took office. Another bust of Churchill is on display in the president’s private residence, the White House says.

The article also points that in Hawaii, D’Souza asserts with no evidence, Obama sympathized with native Hawaiians who felt they had been marginalized by the American government when Hawaii was becoming a state. D’Souza also asserts — again with no evidence — that Obama had been coached to hold those views at Punahou, the prestigious prep school he attended in Honolulu.

You can read/learn more at Yahoo News.