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Thursday, July 24, 2008

Obama Campaign Uses Berlin Speech To Fundraise, Then Denies It

Immediately after the supposed "non-political" speech that Barack Obama gave in Berlin today, his campaign sent out a fundraising email which solicits donations, via a DONATE button in the email that brings you to the Obama campaign contribution page, then denies that it was a fundraising email.

Jake Tapper
reports the content of the email as follows:

"As you may have heard, Barack has been in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia this week," reads the email, with a big red "DONATE" sign. "Today, he spoke in Berlin, Germany. In a city where a wall once divided the free from the oppressed, he talked about tearing down the walls that divide all peoples so we can address our common problems -- the threats of terrorism and nuclear weapons, global warming and genocide, AIDS and poverty. Watch Barack's historic speech and share it with your friends."


The Obama campaign has denied that this trip was a political campaign trip, previously calling it a "fact finding" mission, yet the canceled a trip to visit wounded military members in Germany saying that it would be "inappropriate to make a stop to visit troops at a U.S. military facility as part of a trip funded by the campaign."

To solicit donations using a speech that the Obama campaign claims was not a campaign speech used for political purposes, as a contribution hook, is clearly contrary to the previous claim that this speech in Berlin was of a political nature.

After Tapper reported the email fundraising letter using Obama's political speech to encourage donations, the campaign then emailed to take issue with the piece, claiming that calling an email that solicits donations a "fundraising" email was misleading.



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