MSNBC host Alex Wagner says Fox News hosts and Obama opponents think he’s ‘Secretly a Muslim’

MSNBC host Alex Wagner is in the center of criticisms after comments on her Wednesday show, claiming that Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly and Charles Krauthammer’s criticism of Barack Obama are “a precursor” to saying that “the president [is] actually secretly a Muslim.” 

Do critics think President Obama is secretly a Muslim? MSNBC host Alex Wagner thinks so.
2009 cartoon/Carlos Latuff via wikimedia commons, http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LYYPIMTpiD0/SZ-vveN4s3I/AAAAAAAAA_4/QCH-qPGMAuo/s1600-h/Obama+Taliban.jpg

Wagner raisied the question of how to increase surveillance “in a meaningful way that doesn’t seem discriminatory.” Howard Wolfson, a Democrat who serves as the counselor to Mayor Michael Bloomberg (I-NY), summed up her question as such.

“There is a difference between someone who is a certain religion or a certain ethnicity and somebody who then independent of that professes certain beliefs, decides that they are going to move down a path towards violence that they are going to subscribe to radical Jihadism.”

Wagner immediately took Wolfson’s answer as an opportunity to bring up the “secret Muslim” accusation.

“I mean, part of this is about part of having stringent counter-terrorism measures in the wake of Boston, is showing that you’re strong on national security. I think that Krauthammer and O’Reilly going after the president and saying he’s not being tough enough on Muslims smells a little bit like a precursor to is the president actually secretly a Muslim?

Wagner didn’t stop there, instead repeated her comments.

“I mean, we’ve seen this kind of this kind of version of a conspiracy theory relating to the president and his relationship to the Muslim world is almost as old as his candidacy. And the question is how do you try and separate the politics of this from the actual policy and what makes for good politics and obviously what makes for good policy?”

Politico’s Maggie Haberman, part of the panel, failed to challenge Wagner’s claims and instead said that parts of the Fox News crowd respond well to the idea that Obama is a Muslim.

“I think for people for whom the idea that president Obama is a Muslim resonates is a pretty specific group of viewers of Fox News, of various radio shows and so forth. I mean think that that’s not going to take on the same resonance that it used to, but I do think this is going to be very difficult for him to navigate. He got some criticism initially without the word Muslim for not calling it a terrorist incident.”

Haberman then falsely claimed that Boston was the first terrorist attack during the Obama Presidency, claiming that all planned attacks against the United States had been foiled – Ft. Hood being the most obvious example.

“This was the first time this has happened in his presidency. There have been other plots, many of which were here, or at least one of which I can think of in Times Square, that was foiled.”

  Discussing the response to the Boston bombing, Wagner absurdly hinted that Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly and Charles Krauthammer’s criticism of Barack Obama are “a precursor” to saying that “the president [is] actually secretly a Muslim.” 

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