Donald Trump’s claim Friday that Hillary Clinton and her 2008 campaign “started” the Obama birther controversy touched off a series of instant fact-checking from media outlets who branded the claim “false” – but it seems they may have jumped the gun.
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“President Obama was born in the United States”.
Trump had promised “a big announcement” about the birther issue on Friday, giving the impression it was the objective of the event at his hotel.
Mr. Obama, for his part, has stayed largely out of the birther debate.
They were outraged by Trump’s actions Friday morning, when he concluded a campaign event at his new hotel just across town in Washington with a few blunt sentences admitting that Obama was born in America.
Trump is also wrong to say he “finished” what he called the “birther controversy”. See here and here and here.
Asked in the Oval Office about the renewed controversy Friday, President Obama gave the question short shrift and made a dig at the USA media and its obsessive coverage of Trump. There’s no evidence that either Clinton or anyone on her campaign staff “started it”.
Clinton went on to say Trump traffics in conspiracy theories and should not be president. Poll after poll showed her trailing or too close to her rival Donald Trump. For five years, he has led the birther movement to delegitimize our first black president. She stepped down after four years, and the president has campaigned vigorously for her in 2016. “Period”, said Trump, reversing himself on a controversy about Obama’s birth that the Republican helped launch but that had become a distraction to his White House bid. “What Trump should do for once in his life, own up to his mistakes”. Obama lampooned Trump at that year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, as a stone-faced Trump looked on.
“Barack Obama’s mother was living in Kenya with his Arab-African father late in her pregnancy”, the email said, according to the Telegraph. He has lied about being “totally against” the Iraq war before the 2003 USA invasion.
As he made his statement, which James Fallows described as not unlike a negotiated hostage statement, Trump was having his best week of the general-election campaign.
“I’ll answer that question at the right time”.
Donald Trump’s renouncement of birtherism came with some media gamesmanship that compelled television news networks to air 20 minutes of endorsements by retired military men before the candidate briefly got to the point.
“You don’t think Hillary wants her events to be covered like this?” I want to focus on jobs.
“I don’t talk about it because if I talk about that, your whole thing will be about that”, he told reporters aboard his plane last week.
Trump’s long-expressed doubts that Obama was born in the United States – despite a birth certificate proving Obama’s eligibility for the presidency – resurfaced with a Washington Post interview Thursday in which Trump would not say whether or not he believed the president was born in Hawaii in 1961.
“Trump admits Obama born in USA but falsely blames Clinton for starting rumors”, declared The Washington Post.
This was not enough for some conspiracy-minded Obama critics, however, who questioned the authenticity of the document and demanded the “long-form” certificate from the Democrat’s birth hospital.
Trump responded: “Well, a lot of people don’t agree with you and a lot of people feel it wasn’t a proper certificate”.
“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period”, Trump said at the Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C.
Then he paused and smirked. Well, I’m not that shocked actually. “And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter – like, did we fake the moon landing?” “My hope would be that the presidential election reflects more serious issues”.
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