The Rev Jeremiah Wright, US President Barack Obama's controversial former pastor, has accused the President of throwing him under the bus, in his bid for election
The Rev Jeremiah Wright, US President Barack Obama's controversial former pastor, has accused the President of "throwing him under the bus", in his bid for election.
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| Avoiding him: Jeremiah Wright, former pastor to US president Barack Obama.u00a0Fle picu00a0 |
The Chicago pastor, who has had a rift with Obama's administration for two years, told a group raising money for African relief that his pleas to release frozen funds for use in earthquake-ravaged Haiti would likely be ignored.
"No one in the Obama administration will respond to me, listen to me, talk to me or read anything that I write to them. I am 'toxic' in terms of the Obama administration," Wright wrote in a letter to the president of Africa 6000 International earlier this year.
I'm radioactive"I am radioactive, Sir. When Obama threw me under the bus, he threw me under the bus literally!" he wrote.
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"Any advice that I offer is going to be taken as something to be avoided. Please understand that!"
Cut tiesWhen he was still a senator, Obama cut ties with Wright after the pastor's more incendiary remarks became an Internet sensation in the spring of 2008.
At a National Press Club appearance in April 2008, he claimed the US government could plant AIDS in the black community, praised Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and suggested Obama was putting his pastor at arm's length for political purposes while privately agreeing with him.
Obama denounced Wright as "divisive and destructive" and later cut ties to the pastor altogether and left his church.
