Donald Trump reignited the birther movement on Wednesday when he wouldn’t admit to The Washington Post that Barack Obama was born in the United States.
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Trump’s comments speculating on Obama’s birthplace have been seen by many as an attempt to delegitimize the nation’s first black president, and have turned off numerous African-American voters he is now courting in his bid for the White House. “Period”, Trump said at a campaign event in a ballroom in his new hotel in Washington. “Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again”.
For her part, Clinton offered a prebuttal Friday morning on the campaign trail, saying that even if Trump reversed his view, it doesn’t undo his longstanding position on the matter.
Donald Trump made his usual sarcastic call Friday for Hillary Clinton’s Secret Service agents to be stripped of their firearms – and then added, “let’s see what happens to her”.
And in an interview with Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly last week, Trump again said, “I don’t bother talking about it”. See here and here and here.
“Hillary Clinton, in her campaign of 2008, started the birther controversy”, he said.
The first lady pointedly called out those who continue to question the president’s citizenship “up to this very day”.
He was referring to a controversy from the 2008 Democratic primary fight between Obama and Clinton.
The reemergence of the issue that boosted Trump with a fringe, overwhelmingly white, conservative wing threatens Trump at a time when the presidential race has tightened.
“For 5 years, he has led the birther movement to delegitimize our first black president”, said Clinton.
Some in the media complained because Trump’s 30-second statement without taking questions from the media attracted almost a half-hour of non-stop media coverage.
At his news conference, Obama said that it was time to put to rest an issue that had dogged his White House since he took office in 2009.
The birther issue still holds considerable traction with a large swath of Republican voters.
“Barack Obama was born in America, plain and simple, and Donald Trump owes him and the American people an apology”. An additional 31 percent of Republicans neither agreed nor disagreed with the statement and only a quarter of Republicans surveyed believed Obama was born in the U.S.
“Trump needs to say it himself”. “Take their guns away, okay?
I finished it”, Trump said Friday, at the end of a 20-minute event promoting his new hotel. “His campaign spokesperson who he was speaking to last night – and I was with the team when they were doing it – drafted a statement to say just that”.
Five years ago, Trump became the loudest voice in the so-called “birther” movement, advancing the false claim that President Obama was born outside the United States.
“I think her bodyguards should drop all weapons”.
The president on Friday added that he hoped the election would focus on more serious issues, and that he “was pretty confident about where I was born”. Other journalists found the same thing, FactCheck points out.
But there’s not only no truth to that statement – and a bombastic one released from his campaign Thursday night stating the same thing – there’s evidence that as late as 2014 Trump was continuing to cast doubt that Obama was born in the U.S.
“Having successfully obtained President Obama’s birth certificate when others could not, Mr. Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States”, Miller said.
“Those demands will include religious and political freedom for the Cuban people and the freeing of political prisoners, the freeing of political prisoners”, Trump outlined.
The Republican presidential nominee appeared at the Little Haiti Visitors Center on Friday and accused his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and her husband of profiting off Haiti’s 2010 quake.
“We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers”, Obama said at the time, in a clear reference to Trump.
Then he paused and smirked. “One of our volunteer coordinators in one of the counties in Iowa, I don’t recall whether they were an actual a paid staffer, but they did forward an email that promoted the conspiracy”.
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When local Philadelphia TV station WPVI asked Trump on September 2 about his past statements about Obama not being born in the US, Trump replied: “I don’t talk about it anymore”.
