Rush Limbaugh and the Fox Nation Both Get Duped By Obama Thesis Hoax

Last updated on August 10th, 2014 at 05:07 pm

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Today the Fox Nation and Rush Limbaugh ran with a quote from Barack Obama’s thesis while he was a student at Columbia today that the Founding Fathers did not allow for economic freedoms. It turns out that this was a satire/hoax, which was a fact that was initially lost on both of them.

The original story which had beenrunning on the Fox Nation front page, a post by Michael Ledeen features this supposed quote from Obama’s thesis, “… the Constitution allows for many things, but what it does not allow is the most revealing. The so-called Founders did not allow for economic freedom. While political freedom is supposedly a cornerstone of the document, the distribution of wealth is not even mentioned. While many believed that the new Constitution gave them liberty, it instead fitted them with the shackles of hypocrisy.”
Rush Limbaugh jumped on the quote on his radio show today:

Limbaugh said, “The Constitution is the most liberty promoting and freedom acknowledging document in the history of the world, and this little boy in college writing about it with utter disdain, and he still shares those same feelings.”Later Rush said that he didn’t care if the quotes were real or not because he knows that Obama thinks it.

In an update to the story Ledeen acknowledged that the quote was a hoax, “The hoax/satire was written in August, so it’s not connected to any current event. I cam across it on Twitter, read the blog, found it interesting, and posted on it. I failed to notice that one of the tags was “satire.”So he got me, and lots of others. It worked because it’s plausible.”

The quote is only “plausible” to right wingers who are desperate to believe anything bad about Obama. The original blog post was written in August by Brian Lancaster at Jumping in Pools. This is where a little common sense needed to be exercised. If the above thesis quote was true, don’t you think that it would be a huge news story that would have been broken sooner by someone other than the unknown Brian Lancaster? (No offense to Mr. Lancaster intended).

Then again, these are the some of the same people who want to believe that Barack Obama is not a citizen of the United States, and that he is a “socialist like Hitler,” so they will pretty much believe anything about Obama.

Worst of all is Limbaugh who upon finding out the quotes weren’t true said that he didn’t care if the quotes were real or not because he knows that Obama thinks it. Their desire to believe the worst about Obama is exactly why they will continue to fall for hoaxes and be made fools of, over and over again.

Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

Awards and  Professional Memberships

Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association