First Lady Michelle Obama said her almost eight years in the White House have made it “excruciatingly clear” that Hillary Clinton is the only candidate qualified to become president during her first campaign event for the Democratic nominee on Friday.
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“Hillary Clinton in her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy”.
Clinton herself was critical of Trump too, but her remark may have been in regards to the content of what he said.
“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period”, Trump told the crowd. According to a separate Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted this week, most American adults said the issue would make “no difference” to how they voted. “That is the kind of president they will be, trust me”. Hillary Clinton was not having this.
Trump said, “Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy”.
Trump has said repeatedly during the campaign that he no longer talks about the “birther” issue while refusing to retract his previous comments.
But even as Trump was trying to appeal to his most committed followers, his campaign aides have likely persuaded him to try to walk back his half-decade crusade to undermine the very legitimacy of the Obama presidency.
Within minutes, the Clinton campaign condemned the remark.
Trump is widely considered the leader of the birther movement and has taken credit for Obama releasing his long-form birth certificate five years ago. “It’s about who will have the power to shape our children for the next four years of their lives”, Clinton said Thursday during a campaign stop in Greensboro, North Carolina. “There is no erasing it in history”, Clinton said in an address to the Black Women’s Association in Washington. This is also not true; Trump continued to question whether Obama’s birth certificate was real as recently as January 2016.
In 2011, Trump went mainstream with claims manufactured by the operator of a fringe white nationalist website – one that also pushes the absurd notion that soybeans cause homosexuality – that Obama was born in Kenya.
For years, Trump has consistently suggested President Obama was not born in the US. “Well, I’m not that shocked actually – it’s fairly typical”. We can not just accept this, we have got to stand up to it. “I was pretty confident about where I was born”, he said.
First lady Michelle Obama campaigned at the George Mason University college campus in Virginia on Friday, while Clinton’s running mate Tim Kaine campaigned at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor Michigan earlier in the week.
ABC News’s Candace Smith, the pool producer for Friday, tweeted, “As the designated pool producer; attempted to go on pooled tour, as is customary”.
But five years on, now in a tight presidential election race, Trump’s position has become a liability, repulsing black, Hispanic and moderate voters who he needs to win the Oval Office.
The comment marks yet another reversal for the GOP candidate, who previously said he supported the idea of normalized relations, but wished the US had negotiated a better deal. Then he made them sit through a parade of fawning endorsers before finally spending 30 seconds addressing his birtherism.
Following the Washington event, Trump’s campaign invited the television networks’ pool camera to join him on a tour of his Washington hotel. “Mr. Trump understands the magnitude of the threats we face and is holding his cards close to the vest”.
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This post was syndicated from pulse.ng – Nigeria’s entertainment & lifestyle platform online.
