As his starter loan from good-old-dad was not his money, birther theory was not Donald Trump's brain child. He didn't start the fire. Those who were there at the creation will remember names of the motley crew of pioneers like Philip Berg, Mario Apuzzo, Charles Kerchner, Leo Donofrio, Jerome Corsi, Orly Taitz, and Reverend James Manning who developed the ready-made-for-Trump scenario. WorldNetDaily regularly featured their myriad quests for the grail which was, variously, the birth certificate or some kind of court decision depending on the player. Birtherism had a history and roots in "investigative" junkets and dead-end lawsuits long before Donald Trump co-opted the movement and made it his central campaign issue.Birtherism is to Trump's political rise what his loan from his father is to his business success. It is what made him. He can never deny it.
Today, Donald Trump tried to take a page from the great Gilda Radner's character Emily Litella and say "Never mind!" "You know all that crap I said about Barack Obama's BC and transcripts? Never mind!" It was pretty pathetic.
What will it take to wake up the media to put the screws to Donald Trump? This is not a normal election, and he is not a normal candidate. This birther announcement today was yet another Trump distraction where he played the press. They gathered like iron filings to a magnet today at his new D.C. hotel for what had been billed as a major press event, an event that consisted of a grand opening¹, much misplaced praise for The Donald, and one sentence supposedly intended to allay all doubts about where the sitting president was born. The gall!
¹Grand opening of his own hotel! Guess who profited from this event, billed as a campaign event, being booked at a Trump hotel. Yes, indeed. Trump invoiced his own campaign for the reservation and personally profited.
Hillary, of course, had a reaction which she voiced in her remarks at the Black Women's Agenda Symposium.
Just yesterday, Trump again refused to say with his own words that the president was born in the United States. Donald’s advisors had the temerity to say, ‘He’s doing the country a ‘service’ by pushing these lies.’ No, he isn’t. He’s feeding into the worst impulses – the bigotry and bias – that lurks in our country.Further:
Barack Obama was born in America, plain and simple. And Donald Trump owes him and the American people an apology. So, my friends, there is no ‘new’ Donald Trump. There never will be. Donald Trump looks at President Obama after eight years as our president. He still doesn’t see him as an American.
Think of how dangerous that is. Imagine a person in the Oval Office who traffics in conspiracy theories and refuses to let them go – no matter what the facts are. Imagine someone who distorts the truth to fit a very narrow view of the world. Imagine a president who sees someone who doesn’t look like him, and doesn’t agree with him, and thinks, ‘That person must not be a real American.’
Donald Trump is unfit to be President of the United States. We cannot become insensitive to what he says and what he stirs up. We can’t just accept this.We’ve got to stand up to it. If we don’t, it won’t stop.
Trump has spent years peddling a racist conspiracy aimed at undermining the first African American president. He can't just take it back.
The birther lie is what turned Trump from an ordinary reality TV star into a political figure. That origin story can't be unwritten.
Trump's real agenda today was to divert attention from the empty page that is his arsenal of qualifications starting with his tax returns and any assurance that he will build a wall between himself and his for-profit organization with a complex network of foreign ties should he be elected. Let's be clear: he should not be. This was no come-to-Jesus moment today. We can hope it, finally, humiliated the press into shattering his charade.HFA Statement on Donald Trump’s Press Event
After Donald Trump’s press event today, Hillary for America Campaign Manager Robby Mook released the following statement:
“Trump’s actions today were disgraceful. After five years of pushing a racist conspiracy theory into the mainstream, it was ap the palling to watch Trump appoint himself the judge of whether the President of the United States is American. This sickening display shows more than ever why Donald Trump is totally unfit be president.”
