The White House has lashed out at a Forbes magazine cover story that accuses US president Barack Obama of having his father’s “Kenyan, anti-colonial” world view.
“It’s a stunning thing, to see a publication you would see in a dentist’s office, so lacking in truth and fact,” huffed White House spokesman Robert Gibbs.
On Thursday Gibbs met with Forbes’s Washington bureau chief, Brian Wingfield to express his concerns with the cover story. The spokesman asked Wingfield to “convey to [Forbes NY office] my question of what their plan is to correct the many factual errors that I and others have pointed out about the cover story.”
But Dinesh D’Souza, the author of the Forbes cover piece, contends that he merely gave his opinion on the way Obama thinks.
D’Souza, who loosely based the article on his forthcoming book, “The Roots of Obama’s Rage,” insists “the idea that Obama has roots that are foreign is not an allegation, it’s a statement of fact.”
D’Souza’s article begins by calling Obama “the most antibusiness president in a generation, perhaps in American history.”
He then ties Obama’s policies to his father, Barack Obama Sr.’s, way of thinking, “He took his father’s dream, his vision, his ideology,” D’Souza says in the interview. “Clearly the anti-colonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. goes a long way to explain the actions and policies of his son in the Oval Office. … The invisible father provides the inspiration.”
But according to Gibbs, D’Souza accuses Obama of adopting his late father’s philosophy of weakening America and the West by draining America’s financial resources to empower other countries.
For example, D’Souza writes that the Export-Import Bank, “with Obama’s backing,” last year offered $2 billion in loans and guarantees to Brazil to explore for oil that he says would remain in Brazil.
In a press release, the publication stated, “No facts are in contention. Forbes stands by the story.”
