A prominent California pastor claims President Barack Obama pardoned national-security secrets leaker Chelsea Manning because of an affinity for supporting people who "are confused about who they are" or believe in same-sex marriage.
"He seems to have a weakness. He seems to identify in a way that I've not seen a man identify with," the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson said of the outgoing president Wednesday on "America Talks Live."
"I'm not calling him a homosexual because I don't know that at all but you know this man has tried to convince us to accept men who think that they're women going into a women's bathroom, he tried to force us to accept that as being normal.
"I don't know if something happened in his childhood or what it is but he has some type of issue going on that causes him to identify with these type of people in a way that I've never seen before in my lifetime."
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On Tuesday, Obama pardoned Manning, a transgender U.S. Army private previously known as Bradley Manning and who had been serving 35 years behind bars at at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas for giving classified national-security secrets to Wikileaks.
Letting Manning off the hook is part of a pattern Obama has followed, believes Peterson, a conservative minister who is president and founder of BOND, a religious nonprofit dedicated to "Rebuilding the Family by Rebuilding the Man."
"The first thing he did was get rid of 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell. [Then] he brought in same-sex marriage and now men who think that they're women or women who think that they're men can go into the military and openly be that way," Peterson told Malzberg.
"So for Barack Obama to [pardon Manning] is not really a surprise because for some reason he has this great desire for men and women who are confused about who they are, their sexual identity.
"And so I believe he did this more because this man has taken on the body parts of a woman. I think that's the driving force behind it even if it does mean putting America at risk. Barack Obama has something going on that I don't think we all understand at this point."
Peterson is the author of "The Antidote: Healing America from the Poison of Hate, Blame and Victimhood," published by WND Books.
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