Fox News' Ham falsely claimed Obama "need[ed] changing political winds" to support designating Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group

Summary: On Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, Mary Katharine Ham falsely claimed that Sen. Barack Obama "need[ed] changing political winds" to support designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group. In fact, Obama has consistently supported designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, having co-sponsored a bill in 2007 to do so.

On the September 22 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, Fox News analyst Mary Katharine Ham falsely claimed that Sen. Barack Obama "need[ed] changing political winds" to support designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist group. Ham stated of Gov. Sarah Palin: "She's not a woman who needs 300 foreign policy advisers to tell her that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is a terrorist group. She doesn't need changing political winds to tell her that, as Obama did." In fact, as Media Matters for America has noted, Obama has consistently supported designating the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, having co-sponsored a bill in 2007 expressing the sense of the Congress that "[t]he Secretary of State should designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as a Foreign Terrorist Organization" and "the Secretary of the Treasury should place the Iranian Revolutionary Guards on the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists."

From the September 22 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

BILL O'REILLY (host): Hold it. I'll get -- you can have the last word, Mary Katharine, uninterrupted. I'll try, desperately. Juan --

HAM: All right.

O'REILLY: -- there's no evidence that Barack Obama has any special insight into complicated foreign problems. There's no evidence at all. So, I'm telling you, Palin -- I'm agreeing. I don't know what she knows. She's doing the company line.

JUAN WILLIAMS (Fox News political analyst): Right.

O'REILLY: That's what VPs do, OK?

WILLIAMS: That's all she's doing. She's never met a foreign leader.

O'REILLY: She's doing the company line.

WILLIAMS: She's done no travel. Oh, my gosh. Come on.

O'REILLY: All right.

WILLIAMS: And you're going to put her in as president of the United States?

HAM: But, listen.

O'REILLY: Go ahead. Let Mary Katharine have the last word.

HAM: Well, first of all, she ain't running for president of the United States. She's the VP. Barack Obama is at the top of his ticket with little experience.

And I think this speech -- in this speech, you see a speech of clarity, of moral clarity, on international issues. She's not a woman who needs 300 foreign policy advisers to tell her that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is a terrorist group. She doesn't need changing political winds to tell her that, as Obama did. And she's a straight thinker, and a straight talker --

O'REILLY: Well -- well, you know, when she comes in here to chat with me --

HAM: -- and she's somebody who's bringing a great message to the UN.

O'REILLY: -- we'll see, right?

—L.Y.