In 2008, some Republicans claimed Obama was a Muslim. Colin Powell pushed back

The American statesman Colin Powell died on Monday due to complications from COVID-19. He was 84 years old.

While many remember the four-star Army general for his history-making tenure as the nation's first Black secretary of state and his controversial and misleading justification for the U.S. war in Iraq, the longtime Republican's legacy also includes a notable break from his party to endorse Democrat Barack Obama in his first White House bid.

That presidential race, in 2008, became one of the most politically and socially consequential contests in American history.

Obama was the first Black nominee of a major American political party. His Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, was a Vietnam War veteran who ran as the natural successor to the hawkish neoconservative movement that President George W. Bush had overseen in office. McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, then the governor of Alaska, would have been the first female vice president.

As the presidential race went on, a cloud of racism and xenophobia settled over the contest, and many attacks from the right hinged on the lie of birtherism, including the false assertion that Obama was not only not a U.S. citizen but a closeted Muslim, which some in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks viewed as inherently disqualifying for a potential president of the United States.