Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan told a group at a Chicago mosque last month he met with President Barack Obama before the 2008 presidential election to discuss his pending White House run.
In an Oct. 30 speech posted on YouTube and reported on by The Daily Caller, Farrakhan addressed the 2016 presidential election —won this week by Republican Donald Trump — by first talking about his relationship with Obama.
"We supported him when he was a community organizer," Farrakhan said. "We backed him with money and with the help of the [Fruit of Islam] to get him elected."
Farrakhan, a controversial figure, was ultimately denounced publicly by Obama during the 2008 election after his challenger Hillary Clinton pressed him on the alleged relationship the two men had.
"This part of the story I will leave for another time, but he visited me," Farrakhan said of Obama.
"I have a picture of myself and Barack together. You never saw it, because I would never put it out to give his enemies what they were looking for to hurt him.
"But he told me straight up: 'Farrakhan, the Black vote in Chicago made me win Chicago, but it was the downstate vote that made me a U.S. senator. And I will never do anything that will cause me to lose the downstate vote.'"
Farrakhan told his followers that was merely a political move in order to help Obama get himself elected to the presidency.
"And I said to him, 'My brother, your reality is not mine. And we need you where you are, so I will never ask you to do anything that will cause you to lose the downstate vote' — and I never have."
Farrakhan then went on a fiery rant about the 2016 election.
"So the bigger picture is not Hillary Clinton. The bigger picture is not Donald Trump," he said. "The bigger picture is the black masses of America and the American people whose lives are at stake."
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