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Trump finally acknowledges Obama was born in the US
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AFTER five years as the chief promoter of the false idea that President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States, Donald Trump admitted yesterday that the president was.
“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period,” Trump said in brief televised remarks.
But as Trump sought to put that false conspiracy theory to rest, he stoked another, claiming that the “birther movement” was started by rival Hillary Clinton. There is no evidence that is true.
“Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it,” Trump said. “I finished it, you know what I mean.”
Trump spoke against a backdrop of veterans in a sprawling ballroom at his new Washington hotel. Trump did not address the issue until the end of the event, turning it into a de facto commercial for the GOP candidate, as major TV networks aired the full event live in anticipation of comments Trump had hyped hours before.
“I’m going to be making a major statement on this whole thing and what Hillary did,” he told the Fox Business Network. “We have to keep the suspense going, OK?”
Clinton herself said yesterday that Trump owes Obama and the American people an apology for his role as a leading “birther” questioning the president’s citizenship.
Speaking at an event with black women, Clinton said that Trump’s campaign was “founded on this outrageous lie. There is no erasing it in history.”
She said Trump is “feeding into the worst impulses, the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country.”
The birther idea, which he now denies, provided Trump with his entry into Republican politics and for years has defined his status as an “outsider” who is willing to challenge convention.
As late as Wednesday, he would not acknowledge that Obama was born in Hawaii, declining to address the matter in a Washington Post interview published late Thursday night. “I’ll answer that question at the right time,” Trump said. “I just don’t want to answer it yet.”
Clinton seized on Trump’s refusal during a speech on Thursday night before the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.
“He was asked one more time where was President Obama born and he still wouldn’t say Hawaii. He still wouldn’t say America,” Clinton said. “This man wants to be our next president? When will he stop this ugliness, this bigotry?”
Trump’s comments speculating on Obama’s birthplace have been seen by many as an attempt to delegitimize the nation’s first black president, and have turned off many of the African-American voters he is now courting in his bid for the White House.
Obama yesterday jabbed at Trump, saying “We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers.”
“I was pretty confident about where I was born. I think most people were as well.”
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