Fact Check

Pat Boone - The President Without a Country

Pat Boone criticizes President Obama for not sufficiently acknowledging America's Christian heritage.

Published Sept. 8, 2009

Claim:

Claim:   Editorial by entertainer Pat Boone criticizes President Obama for not sufficiently acknowledging America's Christian heritage.


CORRECTLY ATTRIBUTED


Example:   [Boone, July 2009]


"We're no longer a Christian nation." — President Barack Obama, June 2007

"America has been arrogant." — President Barack Obama

"After 9/11, America didn't always live up to her ideals." — President Barack Obama

"You might say that America is a Muslim nation." — President Barack Obama, Egypt 2009

Thinking about these and other statements made by the man who wears the title of president — I keep wondering what country he believes he's president of.

[Rest of article here.]


 

Origins:   Entertainer Pat Boone, who traces his lineage back to American frontiersman Daniel Boone, is best known as a singer, having racked up sixty entries on the Billboard "Hot 100" chart between 1955 and 1969 (including six #1 singles). In June 2009 he penned the above-referenced editorial, entitled "The President Without a Country,"

in which he used the analogy of Philip Nolan (the famous fictional figure of writer Edward Everett Hale's "The Man Without a Country") to criticize President Obama for not sufficiently acknowledging America's Christian heritage.

We could not locate a source documenting, as claimed at the head of the article, that President Obama stated "You might say that America is a Muslim nation" while visiting Egypt in 2009. He did give a speech at Cairo University on 4 June 2009 which touched on relations between Muslim countries and the United States, but neither the quoted phrase nor anything like it appears in the transcript of that speech. Possibly this quote is a rewording of a statement President Obama made in the course of a radio interview before departing for Egypt:



"And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world," Mr. Obama said. "And so there's got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples."

Last updated:   8 September 2009

David Mikkelson founded the site now known as snopes.com back in 1994.

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