ZeroHedge.com
Following a confusing exchange of comments by his campaign (that President Barack Obama was born in the US), and his tweets (“Don’t believe the biased and phony media quoting people who work for my campaign…The only quote that matters is a quote from me!”), Donald Trump is reportedly going to address the issue of President Obama’s ‘birthplace’…
Trump is on a major roll following pneumonia-gate; will this ‘birther’ commentary break the trend?
As AP reports, Donald Trump’s campaign is declaring that the Republican presidential candidate believes now that President Barack Obama was born in the United States, though Trump has yet to say that himself. And his campaign is cheering Trump for bringing an end to an “ugly incident” that it blames, without evidence, on Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.
For many years, Trump was the most prominent proponent of the “birther” movement, which claimed Obama was born outside the U.S. — despite the fact that he was born in Hawaii. As recently as Thursday, Trump would not acknowledge Obama’s birthplace, declining to address the matter when asked by The Washington Post.
“I’ll answer that question at the right time,” Trump told the paper. “I just don’t want to answer it yet.”
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?”
Hours later, campaign spokesman Jason Miller issued a statement that suggested the question had been settled five years ago — by 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,” Miller said.
“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,” 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.”
Yet Trump repeatedly stoked the issue in the years since Obama released his birth certificate. In August 2012, he 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 while refusing to retract his previous comments.
“I don’t talk about it because if I talk about that, your whole thing will be about that,” he told reporters aboard his plane last week. “So I don’t talk about it.”
But now he is speaking on the matter…