She denied that Hillary Clinton had started the birther theory – then admitted that someone in the Clinton campaign had, in fact, been involved.
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Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961, just two years after the island in the Pacific Ocean became a USA state.
Many in Trump’s audience were Cuban Americans, a cornerstone of Republican support in Florida.
Trump briefly stopped by RNC headquarters before heading to Florida, and Clinton is back in NY.
As late as Wednesday, he refused to acknowledge Obama was born in Hawaii, declining to address the matter in a Washington Post interview published late Thursday.
There was his declaration that the father of Republican former rival Ted Cruz might have been linked to the assassin of President John F. Kennedy, or his claim that thousands of Muslims in Jersey City, New Jersey, cheered when the World Trade Center twin towers collapsed in the September 11, 2001, attacks.
“Hillary Clinton’s campaign first raised this issue to smear then-candidate Barack Obama in her very nasty, failed 2008 campaign for President”, that statement, emailed to reporters, declared. But again, there is no evidence that either Clinton herself or anyone on her campaign staff was involved in that. “We know who Donald Trump is”.
On the day he released the document, Obama jabbed at Trump, saying, “We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers”.
While a sitting president and first lady campaigning for their replacements might not be novel, Clinton especially has a lot to gain from the partnership.
The Sept. 9-15 tracking poll showed that 42 percent of likely voters supported Clinton while 38 percent backed Trump.
Seizing on the comments, Mr. Trump’s team said they felt “vindicated”.
Trump’s reversal comes as he works to win over African-American voters – many of whom have been turned off by his attempt to delegitimize the nation’s first black president. “His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie”, Clinton said Friday.
During a rally in North Carolina, Clinton referenced Mrs. Obama’s widely praised speech from the Democratic Convention casting the election as a choice between which candidate voters want to shape their children’s lives.
Obama was also asked about it.
He added: “Well, I’m not that shocked actually”. I was pretty confident about where I was born. “That is the kind of president they will be, trust me”, Michelle said.
“I’ll answer that question at the right time. Let’s see what happens to her”, he said. After five years of pushing a racist conspiracy theory into the mainstream, it was appalling to watch Trump appoint himself the judge of whether the President of the United States is American.
Trump had promised “a big announcement” about the birther issue, giving the impression it was the goal of the event at his hotel.
But, instead, he held off saying anything about it through more than 20 minutes of endorsements from military veterans.
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“Part of what makes her so appealing and effective as a surrogate is that she’s relentlessly positive, even when things on the campaign trail get negative”, said Olivia Alair Dalton, Mrs. Obama’s former spokeswoman. “He could have taken the quiet time to apologize”.
