Fox Regular Asked If Obama Would Have Omitted Allah From Gettysburg Address

Chris Plante

The Fox News regular broadly credited with creating the false accusation that President Obama omitted the words “under God” from the Gettysburg Address used the same false attack to ask whether Obama would have cut out the words “under Allah” if they had appeared in President Lincoln's famous speech.

Conservative media outlets were forced to issue embarrassing corrections Tuesday after running with the false accusation that President Obama excised the phrase “under God” when reciting the Gettysburg Address for a project organized by filmmaker Ken Burns. Burns has said that he asked Obama to read an early draft of the address, a draft that did not contain the phrase “under God.”

Chris Plante, who hosts a morning radio show on Washington, D.C.-based WMAL, actually acknowledged at one point during his November 19 broadcast that an early version of the Gettysburg Address did not contain that phrase. But he still accused the president of plotting to “scratch out the phrase,” after emphasizing that Obama was “the first black president.” Plante then speculated that Obama would not have scratched out the phrase “under Allah” if it had been in the Gettysburg Address:

PLANTE: What? Barack Obama and his people have the Gettysburg Address in front of them and they're sitting up in leather-winged chairs at the White House with a red pencil going through the speech and they scratch out “under God” and then pass it to Barack Obama and he reads it that way? I mean, how does something like this happen? How stupid are these people? How dishonest are - how fundamentally corrupt, morally and otherwise corrupt, are these people? It is astonishing to me, and it just plays into the stereotype of these people being hostile. If it said “under Allah” would he have still scratched it out? 

Earlier in the program, Plante invoked Obama's middle name, Hussein, while opining that it was “kind of peculiar” and “a head-scratcher” that Obama did not say “under God” while reciting the Gettysburg Address: 

PLANTE: Now, that strikes me as kind of peculiar. That's a head-scratcher. Isn't it? That's odd. You've got everybody else saying it. Stephen Colbert says it. George W. Bush says it. Sen. Tim Kaine says it. Everybody says “under God” when reading the Gettysburg Address. But this peculiar exception is Barack Hussein Obama's and Barack Hussein Obama's alone. Now why would Barack Obama leave out the words “under God” from the Gettysburg Address for a Ken Burns film?

According to Media Matters' records, Plante has appeared on Fox News at least 12 times since October 1, including as a guest on the November 19 edition of The Real Story.