Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign staff leaked the Obama turban photo to the press
Evidence
Two presidential election cycles before Bill Clinton’s 2016 DNC speech, his wife Hillary Clinton was embroiled in a fierce 2008 primary campaign against Barack Obama. During that election, Hillary’s campaign pounced on the opportunity to capitalize on the whisper campaigns about Obama being a secret Muslim. In February 2008, many Americans might remember that there was a high-profile photograph of Barack Obama wearing traditional white African attire (with matching white turban) during a trip to Kenya which was leaked to the press. According to numerous media reports, this photograph was actually leaked by staffers inside the Hillary Clinton campaign to the Drudge Report. According to The Guardian newspaper in London, a Clinton staffer had emailed them the photograph with the caption: “Wouldn’t we be seeing this on the cover of every magazine if it were [Hillary]?” — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 705
Categorization
- XREF: Contradicts the common assumption that anti-Muslim dog-whistling is exclusively a Republican tactic; echoes the chapter’s liberal-Islamophobia thesis and Deepa Kumar’s framework.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 705