On January 20 2009, just moments after being sworn in as America’s first black President, Barack Obama rose to the platform and gave his inaugural address. According to rhetoric scholar James Mackin (2009), the speech's defining characteristic was Obama's use of citation to connect himself with tradition. Americans were unfamiliar with a President that looked like him, so he cited familiar discourses. He directly quoted from the constitution, Swing Time, the Bible, Thomas Paine, Reagan's 1981 inaugural speech, contemporary statistics, historical events, natural disasters, and world conflicts, but the most notable allusion occurs when he references the crowd. Obama addresses all within range of his voice and claims that they have gathered because they “have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord.” While poetic, the statement is not exactly accurate. Most of the shivering supporters assembled on the national mall that morning not because they had chosen hope, but because they had elected him. They had not simply chosen unity of purpose, but had voted for him over John McCain whose campaign, during its final days, increasingly evoked racial fears, conflicts, and discords. Preying on American xenophobia, some McCain supporters suggested that Obama was a secret Muslim extremist waiting to usurp the White House before revealing his anti-American intentions. Republican party rally speakers cited his middle name, “Hussein,” coyly associating him with the Iraqi tyrant, and photos circulated of Obama wearing a robe and turban, presumably the garb of an Islamic fundamentalist. This campaign of fear, conflict, and discord reached a peak when the National Republican Trust Fund aired commercials that claimed Obama was “too radical; too risky,” because, for 20 years, he “followed a preacher of hate.” The commercial itself cited a 2003 sermon at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago in which Obama's pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr., referred to the nation as the “U.S. of K.K.K.A.” and proclaimed, “Not ‘God bless America!’ God damn America!”

Airing these commercials just days before the election, the Trust Fund sought to stir up the same controversy that rose after the Wright sermon originally aired. On March 13 2008, Good Morning America broke the story and first broadcasted the sermon.