Drudge, Hannity Hype Five-Year-Old Video of Obama That Was Extensively Covered in 2008
Matt Drudge got the five-alarm siren GIF out for "Obama's other race speech" — a lid-blowing, election-rocking video that was supposed to be the right's answer to Mother Jones' secret fundraiser footage of Mitt Romney.
Sean Hannity similarly hyped the "bombshell video," saying it "could dramatically impact the race for the White House" and urged listeners to "see [it] before you vote."
After linking to the Romney campaign donation page for a few minutes, Drudge began to drop some hints about this fearsome October Surprise:
THE ACCENT... THE ANGER... THE ACCUSATIONS... THE SERMON...THE SHOUT OUT TO REV. WRIGHT, WHO IS IN AUDIENCE...
The video was supposed to hit both Fox News and the web at 9 PM tonight, but an early sneak peek in the form of a screengrab blew the scoop.
Wthin minutes, BuzzFeed's resident video hunter Andrew Kaczynski produced the clip in question, and boy or boy was it ever nothing.
The video that networks were supposedly racking their collective brains over whether to air so close to the debate turned out to be of a Hampton University speech Obama delivered in July of '07 (full video here, full remarks here) in which he gave a "special shout out" to controversial pastor Jeremiah Wright.
Siren-worthy? Hardly.
Not only has the video been on YouTube since 2007, but its existence was already well-known to conservatives in 2008.
"The comments seems tailor-made for an attack ad," wrote Politico in a September 2008 round-up of campaign gaffes, "where they can be juxtaposed with some of Wright's more inflammatory remarks."
I'll leave you now with this four-year-old YouTube comment taken from Drudge's bombshell: "OMG, this video sinks Obama for good. Damning."
