The big ‘news’ from about a week ago was the release of a photograph, taken in 2005 at a gathering hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus, that included Obama and Farrakhan. Ostensibly, much of the right-wing outrage was about the fact that the photo had never before been released because the photographer, a photojournalist who also held high-level editorial positions for the Nation of Islam’s official newspapers (among other jobs), was asked not to release it by a Congressional Black Caucus “staff member” (see the first video below, where I discussed the photo).

But the right-wing outrage was really motivated by the photo itself, because it gave them another opportunity to brand Obama as some kind of anti-white radical who would never have been elected if the American people had known the “truth” about him. In other words, they are still trying to de-legitimize the first African-American president. Never mind that Obama had not only denounced and rejected Farrakhan during the 2008 campaign, but had also harshly criticized Farrakhan’s bigotry back in 1995, when he was asked about his participation in the Million Man March:

Cursing out white folks is not going to get the job done. Anti-Semitic and anti-Asian statements are not going to lift us up. We've got some hard nuts-and-bolts organizing and planning to do. We've got communities to build.

Furthermore, whatever one thinks the photo might say about Obama’s beliefs, we already know what he would do about them because he’s already been president. The release of the photo let loose a whole round of hand-wringing and tut-tutting I won’t even dignify by summarizing here. Just google “Obama and Farrakhan” if you want to know, although I think you can imagine it easily enough.

Then the ‘controversy’ got more legs when Rep. Danny Davis of Illinois was quoted praising Farrakhan in an interview with the right-wing media outlet Daily Caller (see second video below, where I discussed this topic). Interestingly, Davis is now saying that he was misquoted by the Daily Caller in the interview.

Let’s look at the big picture. The right-wing media knows they can’t deny that their party is led by an open racist—and some of them may not even want to. But they do want to muddy the waters by screaming about there being some (very fine) racism on ‘both sides.’ The photo of Obama and Farrakhan is not news. It tells us nothing of substance about a president whose long public record on the matter of treating all Americans fairly and equally speaks for itself.

Underlying the right-wing media outrage about the photo and its being kept private is one thing above all, and it’s the same old thing the Trump campaign and the Republican Party has done for decades: whipping up white racial fear and resentment. They’ve got nothing else.

Ian Reifowitz is the author of Obama’s America: A Transformative Vision of Our National Identity (Potomac Books).