Says Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., said President Barack Obama might be to blame for the Fort Hood shootings.
Posts on April 2 in a Facebook meme
U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., is clearly no fan of President Barack Obama. In recent weeks, like most weeks, she skewered his administration’s handling of the Benghazi attack, the Internal Revenue Service’s scrutiny of tea party groups and the health care law.
A Facebook meme suggests she also took to the airwaves to sort of blame Obama for the shootings by an Iraq war veteran at Fort Hood, Texas, that resulted in four deaths and 16 injuries.
“I’m not saying Obama is responsible for the Fort Wood (sic) shooting. I’m just saying that we have zero proof that he isn’t,” Bachmann is quoted as saying on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show April 2.
A reader asked PunditFact, an affiliate of PolitiFact, whether this post, which he said he saw on Facebook, is real.
It’s not.
The first clue that something is fishy: The post refers to Fort Wood, not Fort Hood.
The second: The screen shot that serves as the backdrop for the quote is from Bachmann’s June interview on Fox News’ “Hannity” when she discussed her decision to leave Congress at the end of her term in January.
Bachmann was not on Hannity’s show April 2, the date attributed to the quote. She did appear on “The O’Reilly Factor” on April 3, but it was to talk about her questioning of a former CIA official over the Benghazi attacks. She didn’t say the quote in question there either.
A Lexis Nexis review of recent transcripts shows she has not commented about the attacks on the army base beyond a tweet saying she was praying for the Fort Hood community.
“Congresswoman Bachmann never said that quote and didn’t even appear on ‘Hannity’ that day,” said her spokesman, Dan Kotman. “It’s 100 percent fake.”
He pointed out that the same Facebook group where this meme was shared, the satirical Christians for Michele Bachmann, was also behind a widely shared and debunked post alleging Bachmann said Jesus wrote the Bible in English.
Bachmann may not blame Obama for the shooting, but the conservative blog Gateway Pundit did, writing: “The Obama administration is responsible for this mass shooting. They witnessed this before. They didn’t learn a thing. Gun free zones are death zones.” The post was referenced by hosts of “Fox & Friends” on April 3.
But that wasn’t Bachmann. We can’t find a trace of her saying: “I’m not saying Obama is responsible for the Fort Wood shooting. I’m just saying that we have zero proof that he isn’t.” And she wasn’t on “Hannity” the night the post says she was.
The post appears to be satire, but not everyone has taken it that way — all you have to do is read the comments on the original photo. That’s why we’re stepping in.
We rate the claim Pants On Fire!
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