“I am grateful for the growing support of highly respected retired generals and admirals who have been so successful in defending our country”, Trump said.
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“Trump has spent years peddling a racist conspiracy aimed at undermining the first African American president”.
Hillary Clinton on Friday attacked Trump on his history of questioning whether the president is native-born.
“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period”, Trump said from the Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C.
Reid added that what Trump said about where Obama “was born means noting because any reasonable person knew that Barack Obama was an American born in Hawaii and Donald Trump has generated a lot of controversy and been so harmful to our country”.
Obama had earlier said he thinks most people know he was born in the United States, and he hopes the election to replace him focuses on “more serious issues”. Flawless for someone like Donald Trump to attach himself to.
The president had already released a copy of his birth certificate, but after critics – including Trump – called it to fake, he reacted by releasing a longer birth certificate in 2011.
In 2011, Trump claimed that he had sent investigators to Hawaii in a bid to show that Obama’s birth certificate was fraudulent, calling it “one of the greatest cons of all time”.
Mr. Trump crowed about the development during an appearance in New Hampshire soon afterward.
Clinton demanded Trump apologise to the president for having helped spread the birther idea and said Trump had tried to “delegitimize our first black president”. Instead, the Republican nominee turned to an adviser late Thursday to release a statement attempting to finally lay to rest the birtherism crusade that effectively launched Trump’s rabble-rousing political career five years ago. “The reason I don’t is because then everyone is going to be talking about it as opposed to jobs, the military, the vets, security”.
Trump helped fuel the rise of the “birther” movement, which claimed Obama was born outside the US and thus ineligible to be president. It’s fairly typical. We got other things to attend to.
Some media outlets noted that, as recently as this week, Trump declined to disavow his belief Obama was not born in the US, when asked by WaPo, saying it was not the right time to address.
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Trump’s birther history became a major issue again on Thursday after Trump declined to answer a question from the Washington Post about whether he still believed Obama was not a United States citizen. “I have people that have been studying it and they can not believe what they’re finding”, Trump continued at the time, though he never offered any evidence of their supposed findings.
