Get Lost, You Palace-Guard Creeps

As the week ended, Obama's palace guard in the American media were demanding that every other Republican candidate distance himself from Donald Trump's failure to correct, among thousands of attendees at his events, one who apparently is under the reprehensible illusion that the President is a Muslim.

Any candidate who plays this game with the Obamamedia is a fool. Assuming for the sake of argument that the questioner is genuine and not a plant (like, say, the 14-year old all-American schoolboy clockmaker who didn't make a clock at all and is the son of a belligerent Muslim activist and perennial Sudanese presidential candidate whose brother runs a trucking company amusingly called Twin Towers Transportation), putting all of that to one side, there are several entirely reasonable responses one could make to the gentlemen of the press:

1) Unlike Hillary Clinton's under-attended "rallies", a voter doesn't have to undergo a background check or sign a piece of paper pledging to support her in the election before being permitted into a Republican candidate's presence. So at our campaign events there are all kinds of people with all kinds of views - and it goes without saying I won't agree with them all. If you find that odd, maybe you've been covering Hillary too long.

2) Why does one Republican candidate's "scandal" get hung around the neck of every other guy's? I'll answer your question to me about Donald Trump's gaffe after you ask Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley, Lincoln Chafee and Joe Biden about Hillary Clinton's server and how she handled Benghazi. Till then, get lost.

3) In the normal course of events, the President - who is supposed to serve as president of all the people, not just the half of the country that voted for him - should command a certain respect. But this particular president has compared the members of the loyal opposition to terrorists and to the more hardcore Iranian ayatollahs. And none of you media bigfeet huffing and puffing about lèse-majesté gave a crap about that. So, if you'll forgive me, as someone designated a terrorist and ayatollah by Obama, I'm disinclined to rise to defend the President's amour propre. Go hector someone else.

4) As to respect for the office, the President is so respectful of the papacy that his White House reception for Pope Francis will be filled with gay bishops, transgender activists and pro-abortion nuns. Apparently His Holiness is expected to have a thicker skin about dissenting voices than King Barack.

5) If I understand you shrill little twerps correctly, I'm supposed to point out to this guy in New Hampshire that the President is not a Muslim but a Christian. Well, his father and step-father were both Muslims, which means, as far as Islam is concerned, he was born a Muslim. Has he renounced it? My fellow candidate Ted Cruz entered this world in Calgary, Alberta in 1970, which means that he was born a British subject and a citizen of Canada. I don't suppose the Queen cares about that one way or the other - unlike your average Islamic scholar in Qom or Cairo. Yet you media types made such a big deal out of it that Ted was obliged to write to Ottawa to renounce even any theoretical Canadianness. Have you inquired of your buddy the President whether he's done anything similarly clarifying?

6) As to whether he's a Christian, have you asked him whether he has attended even semi-regularly any church other than that of Jeremiah ("God damn America") Wright? A man is free to attend the Westboro Baptist Church but if he chooses to do so I'm not obligated to defend his Christianity. And frankly, whatever the President's personal faith, there is no dispute that his leadership of the western world has been an utter catastrophe for Christians around the planet. Some of the oldest Christian communities on earth have been entirely extinguished on Obama's watch: in Mosul, Iraq, which was an American protectorate on the day he took office, not a single Christian remains. Every single one of them is dead or fled. So, instead of jumping through your preposterous hoops and speaking up for the most powerful man in the world, I would rather speak up for the powerless - for the Nigerian schoolgirls, for the Yazidi, for the Copts in Egypt, and for all the other beleaguered Christian communities in the world this feckless president has set alight and watched burn.

7) Oh, and one other thing. This kind of super-fake-o lame-ass nothing controversy that you dowager duchesses of the press are having the vapors about is precisely why the political process has fallen into such disrepute and your own industry is bankrupt. No real person cares about this "scandal". So, unless you've got a question about the economy or immigration or something real, screw off outta here.

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Mark Steyn is an international bestselling author, a Top 41 recording artist, and a leading Canadian human rights activist. His latest book is "The Undocumented Mark Steyn: Don't Say You Weren't Warned". (Buy it at a 32% discount by clicking here or order in KINDLE edition at a 50% discount by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR)