June 29, 2009: Beck: Obama Hates British Due to Kenyan Grandfather’s Mistreatment by British in 1950s

The bust of Winston Churchill, loaned to the White House by the British government. [Source: WorldMeets (.us)]Conservative radio host Glenn Beck tells his listeners that President Obama recently returned a bust of Winston Churchill to Great Britain because of his secret hatred of the British. Britain gave President Bush a bust of Churchill to display in the Oval Office during his term of office. In February 2009, Obama returned the bust and replaced it with a bust of President Abraham Lincoln; he added a bust of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to the display. At the time, London’s Daily Telegraph reported that the bust had only been lent to the White House: according to the British Embassy, it had been “uniquely lent to a foreign head of state, President George W. Bush,” not given in perpetuity to the US government. A British Embassy spokesman told the Telegraph: “The bust of Sir Winston Churchill by Sir Jacob Epstein was uniquely lent to a foreign head of state, President George W. Bush, from the Government Art Collection in the wake of 9/11 as a signal of the strong transatlantic relationship. It was lent for the first term of office of President Bush. When the president was elected for his second and final term, the loan was extended until January 2009. The new president has decided not to continue this loan and the bust has now been returned. It is on display at the ambassador’s residence.” The White House curator, William Allman, said at the time, “It was already scheduled to go back.” However, Beck explains that Obama returned the bust because he harbors a secret hatred for the British. Beck tells his listeners that Obama’s paternal grandfather, a Kenyan, was tortured by the British during the Mau Mau Uprising in the 1950s, and that is the source of Obama’s supposed hatred. Beck presents no other evidence that Obama holds any sort of grudge or negative feelings towards the British, and ignores the fact that the Churchill bust had been slated to be returned to Britain at the end of Bush’s second term. Beck also fails to inform his listeners that Obama keeps a British treasure on his desk: a wooden penholder made from wood taken from a British sailing ship and given to him by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Instead, Beck tells his listeners: “Why does Obama harbor animosity towards the British?… A listener called me this morning. Said he had found information about Barack Obama’s grandfather in an old Irish newspaper but couldn’t verify it. I said okay, what is it? We looked into it. The information, took us about 20 minutes to find. It was out there, but until today I never heard about this information, and I’m kind of in the Barack Obama business, you know what I mean? I don’t think you have. Maybe you have. What puts you in a position to act unexplainably in weird ways toward the ally? Something must have happened in your life and maybe this is a part of it.” The news report apparently carried an account from Obama’s Kenyan step-grandmother, who told of her husband being tortured by British soldiers during the 1950s. In light of this information, Beck says it “sure makes sense” that Obama would hate the British, and adds that if it had been his grandfather who was mistreated, “I certainly wouldn’t want someone like me dealing with longtime allies.” [Daily Telegraph, 2/14/2009; Associated Press, 1/5/2010; Media Matters, 6/29/2010] Beck is echoing themes advanced by a Nigerian-American conservative in a recent Internet publication, who claimed that Obama is secretly an “African colonial” (see June 25, 2009).