For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis, the election, and more, subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily newsletter.





The ever-entertaining WorldNetDaily has a breaking exclusive this morning suggesting that President Obama may have caused the BP oil spill by dissing Israel. Quoting the Biblical prophecies of Carl Gallups, a talk-radio host and Baptist pastor in Florida, WND reports:

April the 19th, Israel celebrates its independence in 2010,” Gallups says in narration on the video. “On April the 19th, Fox News reports that the U.S. will no longer automatically support Israel in the United Nations. The next day, on April the 20th, the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explodes. Coincidence? Or the hand and judgment of God?”

WND notes seriously that Gallups isn’t the only expert who thinks that America might be “under a curse from God.” Referring to the Gulf spill (which Gallups claims could eventually reach all the way to Europe), the 80-year-old “Biblical expert” and Christian Zionist Hal Lindsey tells WND, “I believe this is evidence that when you turn your back on Israel, especially when you’ve been a supporter, you’re gonna see judgments come from God.”

Gallups and Lindsey are clearly not the first to suggest that the oil spill was indirectly caused by the Obama administration rather than say, oil company incompetence. The environmental disaster has spawned all sorts of conspiracy theories. Rush Limbaugh famously blamed environmentalists for causing the spill as part of their campaign to end deepwater oil drilling. There are rumblings that BP blew up the well itself. No doubt some religious homophobes have found a way to blame gays for the oil spill. And of course, all of this was predicted in Revelations, a section of the Bible Gallups seems to have overlooked in his focus on Genesis and its support for Israel.

But it’s always interesting to hear this kind of stuff coming from WND. The conservative news site does tend to run lots of stories like “European Antichrist Looking More and More Unlikely” alongside its attempts to prove that Obama is not an American citizen. But unlike Limbaugh or the other BP conspiracy theorists out there, WND actually claims to be a legitimate news outlet and the largest English-language Internet news site in the world. It even has a White House correspondent.

In any event, those interested in seeing the oil spill prediction map that has oil washing up on the beaches of France along with a tutorial on the Jewish calendar can watch the Gallups video here. If nothing else, it’s good for a giggle: