Birther row began with Hillary Clinton supporters

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[h=1]Birther row began with Hillary Clinton supporters[/h]
[h=2]The lie that Barack Obama was not born in the US has been fuelled by fringe Republicans — but supporters of Hillary Clinton, now Mr Obama’s Secretary of State, are largely to blame for starting it.[/h]



By Jon Swaine, New York

5:30PM BST 27 Apr 2011

 

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False rumours about Mr Obama’s background first surfaced in 2004, in Illinois, where he was a state senator. Andy Martin, a perennial local candidate and litigant, claimed Mr Obama was secretly Muslim.

Related theories — including that he was radicalised in a “madrassa” in Indonesia — developed after Mr Obama entered the national stage with a speech to the Democratic National Convention later that year.

In 2005, Mr Obama went to Washington as the junior US senator for Illinois. The rumours about him persisted, but seemingly failed to take hold among political insiders and voters alike.

It was not until April 2008, at the height of the intensely bitter Democratic presidential primary process, that the touch paper was properly lit.

An anonymous email circulated by supporters of Mrs Clinton, Mr Obama’s main rival for the party’s nomination, thrust a new allegation into the national spotlight — that he had not been born in Hawaii.

 

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“Barack Obama’s mother was living in Kenya with his Arab-African father late in her pregnancy,” it said. “She was not allowed to travel by plane then, so Barack Obama was born there and his mother then took him to Hawaii to register his birth.” Then in August 2008 Phil Berg, an ex-deputy attorney general for Pennsylvania and a renowned conspiracy theorist, filed a lawsuit alleging that Mr Obama was ineligible to be a candidate.


“Obama carries multiple citizenships and is ineligible to run for President of the United States. United States Constitution, Article II, Section 1,” it said.
By then, the Obama campaign had posted a copy of his “certificate of live birth” — a shorter version of the birth certificate, which is accepted as proof of birth from applicants for a US passport.


But the fact it was not the full, original certificate — and that the campaign failed to show the serial number and other details in their scan — meant that the conspiracy theorists were unbowed.

The director of the Hawaii health department stated that she had seen the full certificate and that it was all in order. Entries from the birth records sections of two local newspapers from the time were found.

Yet still some were unconvinced, explaining away this extra evidence, and demanding to see the full certificate, which Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital said it could not release.

After Mr Obama’s election victory and inauguration, the conspiracy theory survived, albeit quietly. Crudely fake Kenyan birth certificates purporting to prove it were circulated, and more lawsuits about Mr Obama’s birth were filed.

It was not until last month, and the emergence of the property tycoon Donald Trump as a potential Republican presidential candidate, that the issue was thrust back into national prominence.

Mr Trump outed himself as a “birther” in an interview on his private jet on March 17. “The reason I have a little doubt — just a little — is because he grew up and nobody knew him,” he told ABC News.

Over the following weeks, Mr Trump reiterated his comments repeatedly. He added a string of further allegations, including that Mr Obama’s grandmother had recalled witnessing his birth in Kenya, which were simply not true.

While insisting that the media was forcing him to talk about the subject, Mr Trump eventually resurrected the demand for Mr Obama to produce his full birth certificate.

Last week a poll suggested almost half of Republican voters believed the president was not born in the US. It appears to have convinced the White House that it was time to act.

 

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[h=6]- SEPTEMBER 15, 2016 -[/h][h=1]TRUMP CAMPAIGN STATEMENT[/h]"Hillary Clinton’s campaign first raised this issue to smear then-candidate Barack Obama in her very nasty, failed 2008 campaign for President. 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. Even the MSNBC show Morning Joeadmits that it was Clinton’s henchmen who first raised this issue, not Donald J. Trump.

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. Mr. Trump did a great service to the President and the country by bringing closure to the issue that Hillary Clinton and her team first raised. 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.

Mr. Trump is now totally focused on bringing jobs back to America, defeating radical Islamic terrorism, taking care of our veterans, introducing school choice opportunities and rebuilding and making our inner cities safe again." – Jason Miller, Senior Communications Advisor

 

[vitterd]

"She started it". Lmao

Trump made this his main issue for five years. Lied about uncovering information .....now he says he finished it.


He is as sick as you superbore

 

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[h=6]- SEPTEMBER 16, 2016 -[/h][h=1]​CLINTON’S 2008 CAMPAIGN MANAGER ON WHETHER THEY PROMOTED RUMORS ABOUT OBAMA’S HERITAGE: “YEAH”[/h]

“Hillary Clinton Didn’t Tell The Truth About Her Emails And She Didn’t Tell The Truth About Her Campaign’s Role In Pushing These Rumors In 2008.” – Jason Miller​

“With Clinton’s 2008 campaign manager admitting on national television and on Twitter that they promoted the rumors surrounding now-President Obama’s heritage, Mr. Trump has been fully vindicated. Not only was a Clinton campaign worker blamed and fired over the activity, we have now been informed that Secretary Clinton was aware of what was going on, with Clinton’s campaign manager even apologizing to Obama’s campaign manager. This still does not explain why Hillary Clinton failed to fire her chief strategist Mark Penn on the spot over the memo he sent her advocating she portray Obama as ‘fundamentally’ foreign. Hillary Clinton didn’t tell the truth about her emails and she didn’t tell the truth about her campaign’s role in pushing these rumors in 2008. This pattern is never going to change, and it’s why nobody trusts Hillary Clinton.”– Jason Miller, Senior Communications Advisor