Tim Walberg presents his positions as though they are aligned with our country’s traditional values and foundational principles. He often supports his stances with words attributed to American luminaries like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and others. More often than not, those quotes turn out to be false.
Steven Meyer
Michigan’s District 7
Sunday, October 14, 2018
Contents:
I - George Washington & John Adams:
Walberg maligned the words of Adams and misattributed them to Washington
II - Thomas Jefferson:
Walberg fell for a phrase that is commonly misattributed to Jefferson
III - Abraham Lincoln:
III - Abraham Lincoln:
Walberg maligned a Lincoln quote at a Lincoln Day event, & printed a campaign ad with it
IV - Theodore Roosevelt & FranklinD.Roosevelt:
Walberg altered FDR’s words, & misattributed them to TR on his website, & Annual Report
V -Martin Luther King Jr.:
Walberg altered FDR’s words, & misattributed them to TR on his website, & Annual Report
V -Martin Luther King Jr.:
Walberg falsely said that Dr. King and his daughter were registered Republicans
VI -RonaldReagan:
VI -RonaldReagan:
Features three of Walberg’s false Reagan quotes, & research into the origin of one of them
APPENDIX: Walberg’s Habit of Misrepresentation:
Links to reports showing Walberg’s misrepresentation is broad and frequent
I - George Washington & John Adams:
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| Video (1:45 mark): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aic02tXRhTI |
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| Video (3:15 mark): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaMWdbOpIh4 |
eBook of John Adams’ Writings: https://books.google.com/books?id=PZYKAQAAIAAJ
George Washington did not say those things. The closest quote, was from John Adams [above]. Note Adams’ point in the preceding sentence, defining the opposite of moral and religious qualities as, “Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry…” *. Which speaks more about people’s moral and religious civic behavior, rather than as Walberg’s said, being, “…governed by God”. Walberg’s words sound more like a despotic theocracy, than our country with the First Amendment.
I - George Washington & John Adams:
Possible source of Walberg’s Adams / Washington mix-up
July 4, 2009 – HOBBY LOBBY Ad (printed nationwide):
Archive of Hobby Lobby Ads: https://www.hobbylobby.com/about-us/holiday-messages
There are two reasons why this Hobby Lobby ad is the likely source for where Walberg read it, and got it mixed up between Washington and Adams:
1) The ad features Washington’s name directly above the Adams quote.
2) Walberg also recited a maligned version of Washington’s quote from the Hobby Lobby ad at the July 9thEaton Rapids event.
Note that there are major errors all throughout this Hobby Lobby ad. For one, the Adams quote was shown to begin mid-sentence. Secondly, an entire sentence was deleted from the middle of Adams’ quote in the Hobby Lobby ad.
Other websites have taken the trouble to go line-by-line through these Hobby Lobby ads, explaining all of the falsehoods throughout them. However, in this report, I am primarily focused on Walberg’s errors.
II - Thomas Jefferson:
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| Video (2:00 mark): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svXwpOWo9Ig |
Article: https://www.monticello.org/site/jefferson/eternal-vigilance-price-liberty-spurious-quotation
Anna Berkes, a Monticello staff research librarian at the Jefferson Library, has done a thorough analysis showing how this quote falsely became attributed to Thomas Jefferson.
III - Abraham Lincoln:
Thursday, February 18, 2010
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Lincoln Day Dinner (GOP) - Jackson, MI
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| Walberg: “I’ll ask you to read the ad that I paid for, and being a cheap – efficient, Republican Conservative, I don’t waste my money when I put an ad in with something I don’t believe in. But Abraham Lincoln said, ‘America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedom, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.’ We have the opportunity to take this country back.” | |
Video (0:45 mark): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvXS2kZC-Bw
| |
Walberg recited and made an ad with a false Lincoln quote. The actual Lincoln quote is so much more eloquent and stirring than the blunt false one that Walberg attributed to him.
Source, “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln”: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/
IV - Theodore Roosevelt & Franklin D. Roosevelt:
January 2008
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Annual Report - Michigan 7th District
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Theodore Roosevelt never said such a thing. It was Franklin D. Roosevelt who wrote in, “Letter to all State Governors on a Uniform Soil Conservation Law”, on February 26, 1937, which contained this line, “The Nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.”
V -Martin Luther King Jr.:
Monday, January 16, 2017
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Salvation Army Harbor Light Ctr. - Monroe, MI
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| Walberg: “Martin Luther King was a true conservative… That’s true about Martin Luther King, he was, he was a Republican too. He was. He was a Republican - a registered Republican. As far as I know his wife wasn’t, but one of his daughters has been a very outspoken Republican. But that’s neither here nor there now, but he was conservative. And the reason he was, and there’s some quotes put in that I had not seen before from him talking about the fact that it still comes back to the whole issue of spiritual change in a person’s heart, and that’s the only thing that can make our society function in this world.” | |
| Video (00:45 mark): http://www.monroenews.com/videos/4A0000E7-AC2A-4CFC-94EE-ED331B0BD043/US-Rep-Tim-Walberg-visited-the-Salvation-Army-Harbor-Light-Center-Monday-to-discuss-funding-and-issues-with-federal-laws-that-may-impact-the-center | |
- Facts “make our society function in this world” too. Link to my letter to Walberg, April 3, 2017: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByjxjSC9JKMKcUVFQUttVVFpWkE/view?usp=sharing
- Dr. King’s Niece, Alveda King is a Republican, & wrote this piece explaining that her Uncle was not: http://www.priestsforlife.org/africanamerican/blog/index.php/put-the-political-strife-out-to-pasture
- WaPo Editorial which Walberg cites in video: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/martin-luther-king-jr-was-a-true-conservative/2017/01/15/b0f465e4-d9c6-11e6-9a36-1d296534b31e_story.html
- PolitiFact article on how Martin Luther King Jr. was not a Republican: http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2016/jan/25/philip-van-cleave/van-cleave-wongly-says-martin-luther-king-jr-was-r/
VI - Ronald Reagan:
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| Video (1:40 mark): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmPK4xpl8uI |
Note Walberg’s, “…sign the guest book” line which will be repeated at later events.
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| Video (1:10 mark): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi8mx5ot_p0 |
There are two distinct quotes here. I searched for both through numerous Reagan archives:
1) “Gates… swing wide and free…”
I found nothing even close to this one. Walberg has never recited it the same way twice, so I have searched for it with different keywords. I believe it is totally bogus.
2) “A nation without borders…”
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| Video (19:30 mark): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59_eb6GgfqA |
Walberg used to say that, “…sign the guest book” line as a personal addendum to punctuate the bogus Reagan quote, and now Walberg misattributes the entire thing to Reagan!
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| Video (1:30 mark): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fjbnWNpNK0 |
VI - Ronald Reagan:
Where did Walberg’s “A nation without borders…”quote come from?
The earliest source of the quote that I could find was from columnist, Michelle Malkin:
Article about the debate, The Arizona Republic, February 10, 2003
VI - Ronald Reagan:
Following the debate with Michelle Malkin, the line started appearing in several other editorials. Those articles either did not attribute the line to anyone, or used vague references, like, “It was once said…”. Then in late-2005, ads started appearing, and a website was launched for the Mississippi chapter of the F.I.R.E. Coalition, both of which falsely attributed the quote to Ronald Reagan. The F.I.R.E. Coalition was recognized by the SPLC as a nativist extremist group. Soon after a series of these ads ran, the quote started appearing in more articles and blogs which also falsely attributed it to Ronald Reagan.
Ad from Hattiesburg American– Hattiesburg, MS
In 2006, Mike Pence used to recite the phrase a lot during his campaign for U.S. Congress, and he never attributed it to anybody. Ten years later, during the Vice-Presidential debate, Pence recited it again, but this time, he falsely attributed it to Reagan. Mike Pence must have known better.
Video (0:39:30 mark): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox8PTXwDYdc
VI - Ronald Reagan:
Today, the top search result for the origin of this quote is this Café Press store. Since 2008, under the store’s logo and slogan evoking domestic violence, items with the bogus Reagan quote are for sale alongside Anti-Global Warming and Anti-U.N. merchandise.
(2008 РPresent Day) РRightWingStuff.com / Caf̩ Press store
Webcap: May 17, 2008 https://www.cafepress.com/rightwingstuff/1456244
After 2008, the quote and its attribution to Ronald Reagan started appearing all over the place. The earliest Twitter post of it was on April 10, 2009, and the earliest Facebook post of it was on March 10, 2010. Ted Nugent wrote a variation of the quote and attributed it to Reagan in an Op-Ed in Human Events, on April 27, 2010, supporting Arizona’s violent border policies, referring to Arpaio as an, “American hero”, and supporting feeding rotten meat to detained, suffering migrants. Shortly thereafter, I first found Walberg using the bogus Reagan quote as justification for his own positions.
VI - Ronald Reagan:
Monday, September 20, 2010
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Campaign Press Release - Michigan, District 7
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August 15, 1988 - Republican National Convention - New Orleans, LA
At the 1988 GOP convention Reagan used the words as a refrain, and attributed it to John Adams. The saying, and its variations predated even John Adams. So, Walberg [and his campaign] were especially short-sighted, and factually lax to attribute it to Reagan.
- Link to Reagan’s speech in which he attributed the saying to John Adams: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=36273
- Link to investigation into the older origin of the quote and how it became attributed to Adams: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/06/18/facts-stubborn/
APPENDIX: Walberg’s Habit of Misrepresentation:
Walberg’s Own Constituents:
1) Told factually inconsistent stories about three constituents’ ACA complaints
2) Falsely claimed in 2017 that constituents don’t mention Russia concerns to him
The CBO & Planned Parenthood: Lied that a lobbyist document was made by the CBO
The CBO & the Affordable Care Act:Lied that a GOP health care chart was made by the CBO
U.S. Military: Claimed that U.S. Military jets rely on coal fuel from Saudi Arabia
Winston Churchill & Alexander Fleming: Told untrue Churchill / Fleming story in a Keynote
Walberg’s Own College Credentials: Lied for years that he majored: Biology & minored: Geology
Walberg’s Own Father: Lied for years that his father was an immigrant
Joseph Stalin & John Witherspoon & Robert Mueller
More U.S. Founders: Plagiarized portions of a House floor speech
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