Fabrication: Newsweek Makes Up Ground Zero Election Day Tea Party Rally

For the last several weeks there has been a debate raging over whether the grounds surrounding where the 9/11 attacks in Lower Manhattan are sacred and if it would be an appropriate place for an Islamic place of worship to be built. But if it isn’t appropriate, would it be an appropriate place for a Tea Party rally to be held? Possibly not.

But whether that’s the case or not, Newsweek’s David A. Graham would have you believe there will be a so-called “Election Day Tea Party rally” held at Ground Zero, led by former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, as an effort to shore up support for a 2012 presidential bid.

“And now, TPM's Jillian Rayfield reports, he's preparing for an Election Day Tea Party rally at Ground Zero,” Graham wrote in a Newsweek Sept. 22 post. “As she says, that could be the machinations of a man interested in mounting a White House run.”

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But the link cited by Graham, a Talking Points Memo report from Jillian Rayfield says nothing about a Ground Zero Election Day Tea Party rally organized by Bolton. Instead, it is a story about Bolton’s involvement with Election Day Tea Parties organized by Michael Patrick Leahy, founder of the Nationwide Tea Party Coalition.

Rayfield’s story elaborates on Bolton’s involvement in a Sept. 11 protest against the Ground Zero mosque, which is a far cry from the traditional Tea Party movement rally that promotes smaller government, fiscal responsibility and free markets.

This fabrication was been picked up by Fox News Radio host Alan Colmes, which he put on his blog Liberaland on Sept. 23. Nonetheless, it has drawn the ire of Leahy who had harsh words for Newsweek and its reporting that a Tea Party rally would be held at Ground Zero.

"Newsweek was either incompetent or intentionally misreported this story,” Leahy said to the Business & Media Institute. “Little wonder they just sold for $1. Probably overvalued."