Fox News pundit Todd Starnes was riled up during President Obama’s State of the Union, taking to Twitter to call the address “verbal water boarding” and joke that Obama will probably offer “free marijuana” to college students.
Starnes was also very displeased that Obama didn’t mention an Iranian-American pastor, Saeed Abedini, who is in Iranian jail, which Starnes wrote was evidence that Iran’s leaders are Obama’s “Muslim BFFs”:
Obama: :Our diplomacy is at work with respect to Iran.” Ah yes, where his Muslim BFFs are torturing an American Christian pastor. #sotu
— toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) January 21, 2015
Rather shocking that there are people following this feed who don’t have a problem with Iran torturing an American Christian pastor.
— toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) January 21, 2015
Starnes may have missed his own network’s reporting that Obama will be meeting today with Abedini’s wife and children in Boise, Idaho, to discuss the pastor’s imprisonment.
This isn’t the first time Starnes has used the Abedini case to claim that Obama doesn’t care about imprisoned Christians.
The Fox News commentator falsely claimed during a 2013 Values Voter Summit speech that the president had refused to make a phone call to Iran’s president to urge the pastor’s release. “He cannot utter the words ‘Saeed Abedini’ from his lips,” he said of the president.
Just days beforehand, however, Fox News reported that Obama had in fact addressed the jailing of Abedini and other U.S. citizens in the country in a rare phone call with the Iranian president.
Secretary of State John Kerry has also repeatedly demanded that Iran free Abedini.
UPDATE: It seems Starnes has caught up on the news.
Very glad to hear that POTUS will take time in Idaho to visit with Mrs. Abedini! Pray for Pastor Saeed's release!
— toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) January 21, 2015
Finally! Obama to meet with Mrs. Abedini! Thank you, Mr. President!
— toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) January 21, 2015
