While Trump’s aides and surrogates attempted Friday to blame birtherism on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, Florida Republican Party chairman Blaise Ingoglia said he considers the matter closed. In Miami on Friday, his riff about confiscating the agents’ guns went further.
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At a rally in Miami, he told the crowd: “I think that her bodyguards should drop all weapons”.
“They should immediately disarm and let’s see how good they do”.
“Take their guns away”, Trump said. “Take their guns away, let’s see what happens to her”. “It will be very unsafe”.
While some backers of Clinton’s primary campaign against Obama eight years ago raised the question of Obama’s birthplace, Clinton herself has long denounced it as a “racist lie”.
But the Clinton campaign had a quick reaction.
Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook released a statement saying Trump’s remarks ‘should be out of bounds’. Whether this is done to provoke protesters at a rally or casually or even as a joke, it is an unacceptable quality in anyone seeking the job of Commander in Chief.
After years of fueling conspiracy theories, Republican White House nominee Donald Trump admitted Friday that President Barack Obama is an American as he tried to neutralise damaging charges of racism. “If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks”, Trump said, referring to appointments to the US Supreme Court. He also recycled an attack on Clinton’s position on gun control.
Trump’s comment, which came as he criticized Clinton over gun rights, is not the first time he has called for Clinton’s Secret Service detail to “disarm”.
Trump made a similar comment after he accepted the National Rifle Association’s endorsement last spring.
“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period”, he added. Friday marked the first time he said in no uncertain terms Obama was USA born, but he left without taking questions and did not explain how or when he’d come to that conclusion.
Trump’s reversal comes as he works to win over African-American voters – many of whom have been turned off by his attempt to delegitimize the nation’s first black president.
Trump also told his audience, many of them Cuban Americans, that he would reverse the Obama administration’s actions which have eased restrictions on the relationship between the USA and Cuba.
Some of his demands to Cuban President Raul Castro, he said, will include religious and political freedom for Cubans.
The comment marks yet another U-turn for the Republican candidate, who previously said he supported the idea of normal relations, but wished the United States had negotiated a better deal.
Trump also said the USA has a broader obligation to stand with oppressed people – a comment that seems at odds with his “America first” mantra.
He added that the people of Venezuela “are yearning to be free, they are yearning for help”. The system is bad.
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However, she has never argued in favour of overturning the Second Amendment.
