Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) stopped just short of claiming that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were responsible for recent attacks of radical Islamists on U.S. citizens abroad at the Family Research Council’s annual Values Voters Summit Friday morning, claiming that the Obama administration approved of attempts to shut down free speech in America and across the word.
“They [radicals] intend to force us to kiss our freedom of speech and religion goodbye, and that’s why we’re being forewarned today,” she said, claiming that “last December they succeeded with the help of President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton” because they were able to push through the United Nations a resolution that globally that called on “all countries to enact laws preventing derogatory references to Islam, a clear violation to our first Amendment and freedom of speech.”
The attacks on Americans and American values abroad this week gave Rep. Bachmann an new opportunity to talk about the threat the Muslim Brotherhood and Sharia Law presents both at home and internationally.
In July, Bachmann, along with Reps. Trent Franks (R-AZ), Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Tom Rooney (R-FL) and Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA) accused Hilary Clinton aide and the wife of former Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) Huma Abedin of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood.
“The influence today of the Muslim Brotherhood at the highest levels, from the White House, to the Pentagon, to the FBI, even to our United States military, truly is breathless and people have to know about it,” Bachmann said at the time.
She made similar accusations toward fellow Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN). Ellison then called on Bachmann to provide evidence of his connections to the terrorist group, which she ultimately did not do.
Prominent GOP Members, including 2008 Republican nominee for President and current Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH), publicly criticized Bachmann’s assaults on the high-profile Democrats.
“I think accusations like this being thrown around are pretty dangerous,” Boehner warned.
On Friday Bachammn took her blitz to a new level, taking aim at the President himself.
Unlike the war on women “there is a very real war going on in the world,” Bachmann said, touting her position of the foreign policy committee.
She said that the overseas attacks were like “déjà vu all over again” during the late 1970s and failed presidency of Jimmy Carter, which is making people “again desperate for another Ronald Reagan.”
“The fires of radical Islamic traditionalism are not just limited to one country. They are currently raging all across Africa and across Asia,” she posited. “And now the violence has come to us, the United States,” she said, referencing the “cold-blooded terrorist attack” on Libyan ambassador Chris Stevens that took his life on 9/11.
“I want to be perfectly clear. This isn’t just about a movie. This was an intentional act done by radical Islamists, who seek to impose their set of beliefs on the rest of the world, and we will not stand for it.”
Bachmann clarified that she does not think “all Muslims are radical, but we should not be ignorant of the objective reality that there’s a very radical wing of Islam that is dedicated to the destruction of America, of Israel and of Israel’s allies.”
She said this was a direct result of the Obama administration’s “policy of apology and appeasement across the globe and the “supposed success of the President’s foreign policy genius, hailed by the media” is now “exposed for what it really is.” She said the media was now scrambling to make sure “their guy” didn’t get the blame for what’s happening this week.
Bachmann told the audience that Obama’s failed foreign policies didn’t just “happen out of nowhere.” She said that when Obama went to Cairo he “spurned our longtime ally Egyptian President Mubarak by inviting the very violent Muslim Brotherhood, who at that time was outlawed in Egypt, to attend his speech.”
“Now when you hear the Muslim Brotherhood’s mission statement I think you’ll understand why former President Mubarak or anyone would want to stop the violent Muslim Brotherhood,” she said, reciting a portion that called for jihad in the name of Allah.
Bachmann quoted the new President of the Brotherhood Mohammed Mursi’s claim that Jerusalem will one day be Egypt and the Brotherhood’s capital. She tied the comment the Democratic Party’s initial failure to call Jerusalem the capitol of Israel in their party platform.
“The undivided city of Jerusalem is not now nor will it ever be anything other than the eternal capitol of Israel,” Bachman said to a standing to deafening applause from the audience.
Bachmann, who spent the second half of 2011 running for President, is locked in a tight race for reelection her House of Representatives seat after the final round of Congressional redistricting in Minnesota cut her home out of the district she currently represents and made it decidedly more Democratic demographically. Despite uncertainty about her future as a member of Congress, Bachmann has become the female face of the Tea Party movement, a position she will likely continue to hold regardless of the outcome of her upcoming reelection fight.
