Spokesman: Trump now believes President Obama was born in U.S.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at luncheon for the Economic Club of New York in New York today.
WASHINGTON » Donald Trump’s campaign spokesman says the Republican presidential candidate now believes President Barack Obama was born in the United States, despite the candidate’s repeated refusal to say so himself.
In a statement released late tonight, campaign spokesman Jason Miller claims Trump “did a great service to the country” by bringing closure to an “ugly incident” that Trump, in fact, fueled.
“In 2011, Mr. Trump was finally able to bring this ugly incident to its conclusion by successfully compelling President Obama to release his birth certificate,” Miller said.
“Mr. Trump did a great service to the President and the country by bringing closure” to the issue, he added. “Inarguably, Donald J. Trump is a closer. Having successfully obtained President Obama’s birth certificate when others could not, Mr. Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States.”
Trump was, for many years, the most prominent proponent of the “birther” movement, which claimed Obama was born outside the U.S. and thus ineligible to be president — despite the fact that he was born in Hawaii. Trump’s comments were 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.
The statement came after an interview published by The Washington Post in which Trump again declined to say whether he believed Obama was born on U.S. soil.
“I’ll answer that question at the right time,” Trump told the paper. “I just don’t want to answer it yet.”
Asked by the paper whether his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, was accurate when she said in a recent television interview that her boss now believes the president was born in the U.S., Trump responded: “It’s okay. She’s allowed to speak what she thinks. I want to focus on jobs. I want to focus on other things.”
Clinton seized on Trump’s refusal during a speech 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?”
While Miller’s statement suggests that Trump has believed the president was born in the U.S. since seeing his birth certificate, the candidate has repeatedly stoked the issue in the years since.
In August 2012 — more than a year after the president released the document in April 2011 — Trump was pushing the issue on Twitter.
“An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that BarackObama’s birth certificate is a fraud,” he wrote.
Trump has said repeatedly during the campaign that he no longer talks about the “birther” issue, but has refused to retract his previous comments, despite numerous opportunities. Instead, he has described the issue as an inconvenience.
“I don’t talk about it because if I talk about that, your whole thing will be about that,” he told reporters in his plane last week. “So I don’t talk about it.”
The statement from Trump’s spokesman also makes the unsubstantiated claim that Clinton launched the birther movement during her unsuccessful primary run against Obama in 2008.
“Hillary Clinton’s campaign first raised this issue to smear then-candidate Barack Obama in her very nasty, failed 2008 campaign for President,” the statement claims. “This type of vicious and conniving behavior is straight from the Clinton Playbook. As usual, however, Hillary Clinton was too weak to get an answer.”
Clinton has long denied the claim.
On Twitter, her spokesman Brian Fallon did not address that allegation, but said Trump’s acceptance that Obama was born in the U.S. needed to come from the candidate himself.
“Trump needs to say it himself. On camera. And admit he was wrong for trying to delegitimize the country’s first African American President,” Fallon wrote.
Indeed, Trump himself has said that his aides shouldn’t be trusted to speak on his behalf.
“Don’t believe the biased and phony media quoting people who work for my campaign,” he tweeted in May. “The only quote that matters is a quote from me!”
Obama had released a standard short form of his birth certificate before the 2008 presidential election. Anyone who wants a copy of the more detailed, long-form document must submit a waiver request, and have that request approved by Hawaii’s health department.
In 2011, amid persistent questions from Trump about his birthplace, Obama submitted a waiver request. He dispatched his personal lawyer to Hawaii to pick up copies and carry the documents back to Washington on a plane.
The form said Obama was born at 7:24 p.m. on Aug. 4, 1961, at Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu. It is signed by the delivery doctor, Obama’s mother and the local registrar.
On the day he released the document, Obama jabbed at Trump. “We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers,” he said.
20 responses to “Spokesman: Trump now believes President Obama was born in U.S.”
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Yes, let it not be said that this magnanimous pillar of justice and light is not merciful, kind and generous. For he, in his boundless benevolence, has condescended to grant this mere president permission, not only to know where he was born, but to speak of it as well.
A great day.
Trump’s spokesman is a “magnanimous pillar of justice and light”? In that case, I’ll vote for that guy!
Everyone should vote for Trump’s spokesman! Write him in, or he can run as the Justice and Light Party candidate!
Yes I believe you would vote for him…. His little dog too.
Good Goddess, the depth of military jingoism in which Drumpf wallows in his DC Hotel press event! What could this parade of military speakers possibly have to do with opening a hotel?
Has Drumpf, perhaps, taken a vow to employ at the Trump Hotel DC only disabled veterans??? Bravo, sir, bra-VO! Nicely done — especially for a draft dodger.
But great Goddess, what a toxic mashup of business and politics this event is!
By the time I was ten, if someone asked me “What political system is defined by a fusion of business and government?”, I’d have given them the answer. The answer’s the same now as it was then. One glance at the screen confirms it.
so the combover has agreed to release his medical records and agrees obama was born in the united states.
that still leaves the female felon as an insatiably greedy congenital liar operating a multi-billion dollar criminal money laundering slush fund. in her tenure as secretary of state she left classified information vulnerable to hackers, emboldened china, iran, north korea and russia to pursue expansion of their militaries and borders, failed to provide adequate security for the american embassy in lybia which was then attacked by islamic terrorists, and attempted to coverup her incompetence by claiming that a video was responsible for the benghazi attack.
that’s the kind of experience and judgement the female felon brings to this election.
During Pres. Johnsons time 58,209 Americans died in Vietnam War.
During Pres. Johnsons time 34 crew members was killed on the USS Liberty when this ship was attacked by the Israeli Air Force – nothing was told to the American Public
During Pres. Reagan time 241 Marines died in the Lebanon bombing.
During Pres. Bush (the son) 4,486 Americans was killed in the Iraq War.
During Pres. Obama, 4 Americans were killed in Benghazi.
All of the above wars/incidents mislead Americans. Funny, I hear more about Benghazi than all of the other incidents. You should You Tube the USS Liberty incident, it would make Benghazi look like a walk in the park.
you omitted the 1153 u.s. troops killed in afghanistan and the 260 killed in iraq since obama took office.
benghazi was the result of obama’s and the female felon’s insistence on regime change in lybia no matter what the cost and without transition plans for the government of lybia once gadafi was removed. further, weeks after the benghazi incident obama and the female felon continued their complicit use of the video to coverup their incompetence in regime change and the failures of their mid-east policies.
that’s the kind of failures in experience and judgement the female felon promises will continue if she is elected president.
Which word is more powerful- “WAS” born or “BELIEVES” born. If Trump wants to be President, he needs to stop “trying to save pennies”. The birther gimmick is over, bury it and hit the issues that matter most to Americans.
Trump closed the issue that hiLIARy started back in 08….
“New analysis from the Washington Post removes any doubt that the anti-Obama Birther movement was started in 2007 and 2008 by Hillary Clinton, her campaign, and her Democrat supporters.”
Is the Star advertiser a branch of the Democratic party? There is only one thing I cannot stand more than lifetime politicians. It’s news organizations pretending to give an unbiased view to it’s readers. If it was pro Republican I would say the same thing.. One step closer to the end of freedom is to lose an impartial press.
I don’t like it when newspapers endorse candidates, because they’re supposed to be neutral. If a newspaper takes sides in a political contest, it loses credibility and the public loses confidence in the news.
Fortunately, the SA has not yet endorsed either candidate. It has not reported unfairly. Every half-decent newspaper brings up the birther issue because Trump himself championed it—without ANY hard evidence.
If you can think and are not insanely biased in favor of Trump, you must realize that the birther theory is completely unrealistic and completely unrelated to any real evidence.
It’s the media’s responsibility to report and to bring up any questions that come to mind.
It is YOUR responsibility as a voter to ask any questions that come to mind. To blindly worship a candidate who has a lot of controversial issues is not a good idea.
You should call up Trump, ask him what brilliant tricks he’s up to now.
It is somewhat naive to believe that any news source is totally unbiased. A well informed person relies on several different media news sources and then makes their own decisions. It seems that the only solid truth to be found these days is from hacked emails.
Not that they are endorsing outright. It’s more that they use biased headlines and articles and there is no balance. I know they retrieve these from AP and others but there is never a “Hillary sued by Benghazi families” Or “Hillary Clinton’s Truth Problem”. maybe the Clinton Foundation money laundering scheme? not saying the stuff on Trump is not worthy of printing. But just like Caldwell and the mess that is the rail, this paper bends over backwards to provide a slanted view. jmo
In other words what about investigative reporting that goes after both side instead of waiting for Wiki leaks or hacker to expose the truth.
Does anyone “believe” the media is neutral. Bwaaaaaaaahaaaahahaaaaaahahahaha!
Lol. Is that Jason “Mayhem” Miller? His spokesman now?
I believe Obama was born in Hawaii because Neil Abercrombie said he was there when it happened. Of course Neil was also taking a trip to Kenya around that time so we should pin the dates down a little better.
where is shorty? Wonder if he went back to his cab car and smoking MJ’s? Maybe converting to UBER?
don’t believe trumpy is sincere, he is likely just saying this to say; but there is still doubt in his mind. he lies so much, it is hard to believe anything he says. he should have apologized.
“former McClatchy D.C. Bureau Chief James Asher tweeted that long-time Clinton confidante Sidney Blumenthal had encouraged him to investigate the rumor that Obama was not born in America in 2008.”
“Clinton 2008 campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle admitted that there was an Iowa volunteer who forwarded an email promoting the conspiracy.”
birther claims were cooked up by the female felon’s campaigners in 2008. why should the combover apologize for the female felon’s campaign gaffe.