Email Raises Questions About Obama's Trip to Bozeman

Junk email, chain letters and forwards flood our inboxes every day. But one email is raising questions about President Obama’s August trip to Montana. So we did some checking.

The email criticizes everything from where the town hall was held, to whether lobster was flown in just for the presidential party. The email says UPS shipped thousands of dollars of lobster in for Obama. But that’s not what a manager at Bozeman’s UPS Distribution Center says. Les Taylor told the News Channel that lobster shipments come in all the time for Big Sky customers, and that nothing extraordinary happened the weekend Obama was in town.

The town hall was held in an airport hanger at the Gallitan Field Airport in Belgrade. The email claims it’s totally secluded from the public. But that’s not what Google maps shows, or the director of the airport Brian Springer says. The airport is just about a half mile off of Old Highway 10 and five miles from Bozeman. The hanger was also one of the only three spots at the airport that could handle Air Force One.

The email claims only 600 tickets were passed out, but nearly 1300 people attended the town hall. And a spokesperson for the Bozeman Human Resource Development Council says they were never contacted by the White House and calls the claim ‘ridiculous.’

The email we received was signed Lady X. Others floating around say Sue sent it. It’s made its way all across the West and into the hands of officials at the White House. But no one we’ve talked to can figure out where it started.

Analysts will tell you this type of propaganda politics is nothing new, but what has changed is the way we are receiving the information. University of Montana Political Science professor Robert Sindal says the Internet is "both good and bad. It’s good because you can find all kinds of things that were very difficult to get. It’s bad, because arguable there’s a lot of bad information or misinformation and to someone who’s not careful about where their getting their information, that can have influence."

But it seems it doesn’t matter what side of the line you fall on, we spoke with members from both parties in Missoula and they say it’s up to the people to find the facts.