(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Tucker Carlson’s interview with Larry Sinclair, who has long claimed to have engaged in drug-fueled gay sex with Barack Obama, didn’t break any new ground about the allegations, but it did spark an online divide between conservative commentators over whether the claims should be believed.
Carlson’s introductory overview offered no opinion on Sinclair’s veracity, but he said the explosive claims deserved to be given renewed scrutiny.
The allegations Sinclair made during the interview rehashed many of the claims he first made in 2008 when Obama was running for president, and claims that were reiterated during an interview posted by The Liberty Daily earlier this year.
Sinclair said he was introduced to Obama by a limo driver at a Chicago bar in 1999, when the former president was still a relatively unknown Illinois state senator. After allegedly paying Obama to score some cocaine, Sinclair claimed the pair returned to the limo and proceeded to have drug-fueled sex. Obama allegedly showed up the following day at Sinclair’s hotel room for another round of sex and drugs.
Sinclair told Carlson he didn’t learn Obama’s identity until he saw his alleged gay-lover making the keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. When Obama launched his 2008 presidential run, Sinclair said he was rebuffed by the campaign concerning his allegations.
Sinclair further claimed he was told by Donald Young, the former choir director of Obama’s spiritual guru Jeremiah Wright’s church, that he also had multiple gay sexual encounters with Obama and feared for his life that he would be silenced before making his allegations public. Young was killed in a Chicago shooting days before the 2007 Iowa Caucus, a homicide case that reportedly was never solved.
When Sinclair first made his allegations public in 2008, his claims were attacked by Obama’s media shills who “batted the claims without refuting them — they’re absurd — and the rest of the media followed suite,” Carlson said.
“But the claims weren’t absurd. We’re not claiming they’re true, but they were certainly credible,” Carlson said.
Social media was split on that assessment, crossing partisan lines in the process. The first lob came from leftist agitator and Trump-hater Ed Krassenstein, who challenged, “If you are going to believe a random guy on Tucker Carlson’s show who claims to have done something with Barack Obama, yet not believe a woman who successfully sued Trump for defamation and assault in a court of law, then you are showing your bias.” The harangue continued, but the general theme echoed with some conservatives.
Renegade podcaster Tim Pool acknowledged as much, tweeting “i agree with this. Any asshole can make up some insane claim about anyone. we saw this with Chrstine Blasey Ford and that other woman who claimed Kavanaugh was having gang rape parties. not interested in WWE news.”
Turning Point USA ambassador Evan Kilgore offered a different takeaway from the interview. “If Larry Sinclair is lying, Obama could easily sue him for defamation… but he doesn’t. He’s been telling this story consistently for years,” Kilgore tweeted.
Conservative commentator Mike Cernovich was more blunt with his assessment.
“Shitlibs said Kavaugh ran a street gang to rape high school kids. In the New Yorker. Sourced to Avenatti. But conservatives be like whoa whoa who I want NO PART of the Obama allegations,” he wrote in a fiery tweet. “How pathetic many of you are. You want little head pats from the left.”
Even Elon Musk weighed in on the issue. “Of course, the probability that his claims are true would have to rest on objective evidence, rather than claims made by someone with a dubious history,” he tweeted.
Others took issue with Carlson’s interview glossing over a large part of that history, which included a felony conviction and a prison stint for forgery, among other shortcomings.
“It’s weird, too, how they omitted the part about the guy failing a polygraph test, then accusing David Axelrod of tampering with the results,” tweeted Giancarlo Sopo, communication strategist and political writer. “There are so many legitimate criticisms one could make of Obama. This is just crap.”
Before Carlson’s interview dropped on Wednesday, RedState’s Bonchie warned of Sinclair’s shady past, noting that “Individual viewers will have to decide how Sinclair’s past speaks to his credibility or lack thereof.” Bonchie offered his own decision after the full interview had aired.
“Not gonna be a popular opinion, but the convicted fraudster who has been grifting for decades probably isn’t telling the truth about having a random gay encounter with Barack Obama in 1999,” he tweeted. “Flame away.”
Before the outrage-cycle begins over Tucker's expose on Obama's creepy personal life tonight please REMEMBER: This is how the LEFT celebrated Obama.
Real Cover, 2012 pic.twitter.com/6LOW3JwscW
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 6, 2023
Mark Pellin is an editor at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/sabrepaw70.
