Trump admits Obama was born in U.S., but falsely blames Clinton for starting rumors



Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump falsely claimed on Sept. 16 that Hillary Clinton was responsible for starting the birther movement that accused President Obama of lying about his birthplace. (The Washington Post)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Friday acknowledged for the first time that President Obama was born in the United States, ending his long history of stoking unfounded doubts about the nation’s first African-American president but also seeking to falsely blame Democratic rival Hillary Clinton for starting the rumors.

"Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it. I finished it, you know what I mean," Trump said at his newly opened luxury hotel in Washington on Friday morning. "President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period."

This is not the first time that Trump has accused Clinton of first raising questions about Obama's birthplace, an assertion that has been repeatedly disproved by fact-checkers who found no evidence that Clinton or her campaign questioned Obama's birth certificate or his citizenship.

Clinton, who also spoke in D.C. on Friday morning, said Trump owes Obama an apology for promoting a false theory about his birthplace. She did not directly address the Trump assertion that her own 2008 campaign promoted the same theory, but her current campaign flatly rejected that claim.

“For five years, he has led the birther movement to delegitimize our first black president,” Clinton said. "His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie. There is no erasing it in history."

Obama told reporters on Friday that he “was pretty confident about where I was born,” and White House press secretary Josh Earnest added on Friday afternoon: “With regard to an apology, I don’t think the president much cares.”

Trump's brief statement came during a campaign event at his newly opened hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. The event began more than an hour later than scheduled, and for the first 25 minutes, a series of military veterans talked about why they support him for president. The line-up included Lt. General Thomas G. McInerney, who has also publicly questioned the president's place of birth. Many of the major cable networks carried these comments live, although several cut away as the event dragged on.

Trump took no questions from reporters, who were seated behind several rows of cheering Trump supporters. Reporters, some standing on chairs, tried to shout out questions, with one reporter yelling: "Take some questions!"

Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook said in a statement that the event was "disgraceful."

"After five years of pushing a racist conspiracy theory into the mainstream, it was appalling to watch Trump appoint himself the judge of whether the President of the United States is American," Mook said. "This sickening display shows more than ever why Donald Trump is totally unfit to be president.”

For years, Trump has been the most prominent backer of the so-called birther movement, which lurked in the dark corners of the Internet until Trump forced it into the mainstream. While drumming up publicity for his own possible run for the White House during the last election cycle, Trump began to aggressively question Obama’s qualifications for office. Trump never came out and said where he thinks the president was born, but he demanded to see the president’s longform birth certificate and other records. Trump also claimed to have hired investigators.

Questions about Obama's birthplace first surfaced in 2008 as he faced Clinton in the Democratic primary. In the spring of that year, some of Clinton's supporters circulated anonymous emails questioning Obama's citizenship but there is no evidence linking those messages to Clinton or her campaign. The Hawaii Department of Health confirmed that Obama was born in Honolulu.

In April 2011, following renewed questions raised by Trump, Obama released his longform Hawaiian birth certificate in the name of putting all of the conspiracy theories to rest, and Trump congratulated himself and said that he "accomplished something that nobody else has been able to accomplish."

But Trump didn’t revise his position and repeatedly questioned the validity of the document Obama released. In an October 2011 interview with CNN, Trump said that if "you check out the Internet, many people say it is not real." In August 2012, Trump tweeted that "an 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that @BarackObama's birth certificate is a fraud."

Days before the 2012 election, Trump posted a video online that labeled Obama "the least transparent president in the history of this country" and demanded that Obama release his college records, college applications and passport records. Trump said that if he ran for president, he would release his tax returns — something that he now refuses to do because he says several years of his returns are under audit by the Internal Revenue Service. Trump is the first nominee from a major party since 1976 to not release his returns, and he has also declined to release documentation of his wife's immigration from Slovenia, full medical records and other documents typically shared by nominees.

Lies. Obama was born in Saudi Arabia.

Everybody knows that.

John Smith wrote on Sep 20^th, 2016 at 9:01am:


Trump's bullshit heroism is evident by the stupid poo he continues to spew, even if he doesn't mean a word of it. Because he's surrounded himself with lunatics that DO.

Hillary's bullshit is even more  evident not only by her own track record, but by the fact that every Wall Street warmongering neocon shitbag from here to Hell is lining up behind her, and they damn sure are not doing that because she was pretending to agree with Bernie on everything during the primaries (to steal votes from him).

World War III and a global economic collapse (due to SHAFTA) are not better than the Adolf Hitler/Charles Manson wet dream race war.

Just different. Neither one of them is acceptable.

Won't be an issue after November Marla ... move on to the next topic, the Manhattan fracas, only helping Trump. Has Hillary explained yet why that had to happen?

He bears an uncanny resemblance to our own right wing Islamaphobe, Mr Corey Bernardi

Marla wrote on Sep 20^th, 2016 at 9:06am:


Thanks Marla,

Of note is that : Obama has not proffered his birth certificate nor has Hillary said Obama was born in the US.

Trump said that and concluded the whole discussion.
Obama could have done that years ago.

Sprintcyclist wrote on Sep 20^th, 2016 at 12:03pm:




Did I just dream the release of the birth certificate? Did I dream the poo Trump copped at the White House Correspondants Dinner for that?

NorthOfNorth wrote on Sep 20^th, 2016 at 2:17pm:



Does that mean Obama is gay?

Marla wrote on Sep 20^th, 2016 at 9:06am:






And here's another reason why they call her Dishonest Hillary ** cough, cough**

Anyway, wherever BHU was born, he is a Muslim. Maybe an apostate Muslim, but still a Muslim.