This past Tuesday, Gaffney was one of a dozen speakers who joined Hillsborough Christian conservative activist Terry Kemple to denounce the Hillsborough County School Board for its refusal to ban the Muslim-American civil rights group CAIR from speaking in county schools.
CL asked Gaffney how he justified remarks made at the news conference that criticized President Obama for hurting America's stature in Egypt (this was hours before an angry mob attacked the American Embassy in Cairo). Much of the criticism revolves around the Muslim Brotherhood, the worldwide Islamic movement that supports democratic principals, as well as Sharia law.
"President Obama played an incalculably important role in helping the Muslim Brotherhood come to power in Egypt. I don't know if he bears the sole responsibility by any means, and in fact, obviously, there are a lot of other forces at work. Not least that you have in Egypt today the accrued results of decades of indoctrination of the public through the state-controlled media, the state-controlled education system, and the state-controlled mosques into a rabidly Islamist orientation," he said. "So that was clearly a factor as well. But I think people are pointing to when you had him legitimating the Brotherhood as he did in his Cairo speech in 2009 by insisting that they be present over objections over the government. When you saw his Secretary of State say that we are going to engage with them. When you saw them providing $1.5 billion to the Brotherhood-controlled government after the Parliament came to office, when you see them now contemplating a billion in debt relief. You put all of that together and I think it unquestionably signaled, to the political system, to say nothing of calling for the downfall of Hosni Mubarak, that the U.S. government was good with the Brotherhood coming to power. I think that unquestionably played a factor."
Although it's easy to second guess the U.S. stance in Egypt (as if they could control events during the Arab Spring), Romney never said if he would have publicly backed the extremely unpopular Mubarak — a brutal dictator who arrested and detained citizens for any reason he conceived during the 30 years he ran the country, the entire time under emergency law.
Mubarak and his two sons were also accused of stealing more than $70 billion from the public treasury.
Wednesday night on the Telemundo network, President Obama said he doesn't consider Egypt to be a U.S. ally or enemy, an interesting development.
Egypt's new leader, Mohammed Morsi, is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. He's also Egypt's first democratically-elected president.
