Clinton, who leads Trump by 4 percentage points in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll, on Friday demanded Trump apologise to the president for having helped spread the birther idea and said Trump had tried to “delegitimise our first black president”.
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“Take their guns away”, Trump said. In Miami on Friday, his riff about confiscating the agents’ guns went further.
“I think that her bodyguards should drop all weapons”, Trump said.
Even in January of this year, Trump sounded skeptical when asked whether he now believed the president was a natural-born citizen. “She doesn’t want guns”, he said.
Clinton said in a series of tweets Friday that when Trump tries to “deflect blame” for denying that Obama was born in the United States, her Republican opponent “is lying”. “It’ll be very unsafe”, he added.
FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, wrote of Clinton and the “birther” movement a year ago, “While it’s true that some of her ardent supporters pushed the theory, there is no evidence that Clinton or her campaign had anything to do with it”.
It took a few weeks longer than that for Trump to close the gap with the Democratic presidential nominee, who returned to the campaign trail eager to move past visualizations of her stumbling and dizzy.
USA Today put it right in their headline: No, Hillary Clinton did not start the “birther” movement.
Spokesman Robby Mook released a statement saying Trump “has a pattern of inciting people to violence”.
It comes after a TV-friendly day where Trump discussed some of his medical records with talk show host Mehmet Oz, drawing laughter and applause when the television doctor said Trump had high testosterone levels, and “Tonight Show” show host Jimmy Fallon playfully mussed the candidate’s hair during a lighthearted interview.
Both Trump and Clinton are receiving Secret Service protection.
The seemingly ominous comment evoked a remark Trump made last month that many Democrats condemned as a call for Clinton’s assassination.
Clinton has called for tighter access to guns, including universal background checks, but has never said she planned to get rid of the Second Amendment. “And that is especially true for young people like all of you”, she said, noting that voters under the age of 30 provided the margin of victory for Obama in the swing states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and Virginia in 2012.
“Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know”, he added.
“While they waited, and waited, Trump provided what amounted to a campaign infomercial and shamelessly promoted his new Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington”, the daily said.
Earlier in that speech, Trump ridiculed Clinton’s use of a Secret Service detail, a perk the GOP standard-bearer enjoys as the party’s official nominee.
The rally Friday in Virginia was Mrs. Obama’s first solo campaign event for Clinton and comes almost two months after her star turn at the Democratic convention.
At a rally in Miami on Friday, Trump said that Clinton’s bodyguards should disarm themselves.
Trump ignored questions from reporters about his switch and has yet to explain why he abandoned the “birther” stance that fueled his political fame and was viewed by critics as an attempt to delegitimize the nation’s first African-American president.
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At the same rally, Trump also vowed to reverse improved United States relations with Cuba unless the island nation meets his demands for more religious and political freedom.
