List 'O the Day: loyalty smears

Smears of Barack Obama's loyalty 2006-

December 2006: Columnist Debbie Schlussel notes that Obama's father was a Muslim and asks "Where will his loyalties be?"

February 2008: Radio talk show host Bill Cunningham calls Obama "this Manchurian candidate" but says "I do not believe Barack Hussein Obama is a terrorist or a Manchurian candidate."

April 2008: During an apperance on Glenn Beck's show on CNN Headline News, Ann Coulter asks "Is Obama a Manchurian candidate to normal Americans who love their country? ... Or is he being the Manchurian candidate to the traitor wing of the Democratic Party?"

May 2008: Fox News analyst Dick Morris states that "the determinant in the election will be whether we believe that Barack Obama is what he appears to be, or is he somebody who's sort of a sleeper agent who really doesn't believe in our system and is more in line with [Rev. Jeremiah] Wright's views?"

June 2008: During separate television apperances on Fox News and NBC, Dick Morris says "[T]he question that plagues Obama is ... Is he pro-American?" and states that "[T]his whole debate about what kind of president [Sen. Barack] Obama would make has swirled around almost an existential level. Is he sort of a Manchurian candidate? A sleeper agent? Or is he the great hope of the future?" Fox News host E.D. Hill also asked whether a fist bump between Obama and his wife was "A terrorist fist jab?"

April 2009: Frank Gaffney claims on MSNBC that Obama's apparent bow to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was "code" telling "our Muslim enemies that you are willing to submit to them."

May 2009: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich alleges on "Fox News Sunday" that there is a "weird pattern" in which Obama administration officials were "prepared to take huge risks with Americans in order to defend terrorists" and suggests that the Obama administration was proposing "welfare" for terrorists. He then claims on "Meet the Press" that the Obama administration's "highest priority" is to "find some way to defend terrorists."

June 2009: Senator James Inhofe calls Obama's Cairo speech "un-American" and says "I just don't know whose side he's on." Talk show host Lee Rodgers asserts that Obama is "an anti-American president" and that Obama's policies will lead to a "few million dead Americans."

August 2009: On the Lou Dobbs radio show, substitute host Tom Marr says "I have to believe that there is still an inner Muslim within this man that has some sense of sympathy towards the number one enemy of freedom and democracy in the world today, and that is Islamic terrorism."

September 2009: Gaffney says Obama is "pursuing [an agenda] that is indistinguishable in important respects from that of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose mission ladies and gentlemen, we know from a trial in Dallas last year, is to quote to destroy Western civilization from within by its own miserable hand." Conservative pundit Tammy Bruce says on Fox News that Obama has "some malevolence toward this country."

November 2009: Fox's Sean Hannity suggests that President Obama was somehow responsible for the Fort Hood shooting, stating that "our government apparently knew and did nothing" about "a terrorist act" and then asking "What does it say about Barack Obama and our government?"

December 2009: Citing a dubious report that the Obama administration had threatened Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) with closing Offutt Air Force Base, home of the US Strategic Command, if Nelson didn't support the health care reform bill in the Senate, Glenn Beck suggests that the allegation would constitute "high crimes," asked "[H]ow much closer do you get to treason?", and said the claim "borders treason" and "borders on treason."

January 2010: The New York Post publishes an editorial asking "Whose side is the Justice Department on: America's or the terrorists'? ... [T]he president and his administration also owe the American people an answer: Is the government's prosecutorial deck stacked in favor of the terrorists?" Former senator Fred Thompson also jokes that the US could win the war in Afghanistan if we "[j]ust send Obama over there to campaign for the Taliban."

February 2010: During a conference call with conservative bloggers, Senator Kit Bond (R-Mo.) accuses the Obama administration of having a "a terrorist protection policy" and conducting a "jihad to close Guantanamo." In addition, based on a superficial resemblance between two logos, Frank Gaffney suggests that President Obama's missile defense policies "seem to fit an increasingly obvious and worrying pattern of official U.S. submission to Islam and the theo-political-legal program the latter’s authorities call Shariah."

April 2010: Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) writes an article for The Daily Caller alleging that Obama is "disadvantaging the United States one step at a time and undermining this country’s national defense on purpose."

July 2010: Writing in the Washington Times, former GOP Rep. and third party gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo calls Obama "a more serious threat to America than al Qaeda" and "a dedicated enemy of the Constitution," while columnist Jeffrey Kuhner of the Edmund Burke Institute describes Obama as an "usurper" who is creating "a socialist dictatorship" and has engaged in "treasonous" behavior by suing Arizona over its immigration law.

August 2010: National Review's Andrew McCarthy publishes an entire book claiming that Obama is pursuing an agenda that will aid Islamic radicals. The dust jacket states that "the global Islamist movement's jihad ... has found the ideal partner in President Barack Obama, whose Islamist sympathies run deep." Commentary's Jennifer Rubin writes that Obama's "sympathies for the Muslim World take precedence over those, such as they are, for his fellow citizens" in a post criticizing Obama's statement on the proposed Muslim community center near Ground Zero.

September 2010: David Limbaugh suggests that Obama may be "trying intentionally to take us over the cliff" in a Newsmax.tv interview.

May 2013: When asked whether Obama "actually switched sides in the War on Terror," former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld answered, "You know, I just don't feel competent to answer. I can't tell."