National Review columnist Andy McCarthy held a press conference today alongside Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy to defend the credibility of Michele Bachmann’s anti-Muslim witch hunt. However, McCarthy got tripped up after Nick Sementelli of Faith in Public Life asked him about Gaffney, who introduced McCarthy at the briefing, and his extremist views.
Gaffney is a birther, and in fact he dedicated an entire radio program to promote the birther conspiracy, and also thinks that President Obama may be a Muslim:
What little we know about Mr. Obama’s youth certainly suggests that he not only had a Kenyan father who was Muslim, but spent his early, formative years as one in Indonesia. As the president likes to say, “much has been made” — in this case by him and his campaign handlers — of the fact that he became a Christian as an adult in Chicago, under the now-notorious Pastor Jeremiah A. Wright.
With Mr. Obama’s unbelievably ballyhooed address in Cairo Thursday to what he calls “the Muslim world” (hereafter known as “the Speech”), there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself.
When Sementelli asked McCarthy about Gaffney’s claims, McCarthy went on to call such views “nutty” but then denied that he was referring to Gaffney.
Watch as McCarthy stutters through his answer and attempts to Sementelli’s questions:
