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<\/a><\/p>\nRepublican\u00a0presidential nominee\u00a0Donald Trump, whose questioning of Barack Obama\u2019s presidential eligibility in 2011 preceded the White House\u2019s release of what it claimed was Obama\u2019s Hawaii birth certificate, said on Friday the issue is settled.<\/p>\n
\u201cPresident Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period,\u201d Trump said. \u201cAnd now we all want to get back to making American strong and great again.\u201d<\/p>\n
His comment came at the end of a press conference in which he promoted his new hotel in Washington and was endorsed by a number of military veterans.<\/p>\n
Related article (story continues below):<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
Trump stuns with release of pro-life agenda<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n The birth certificate issue arose during the 2008 presidential campaign, based on the Constitution\u2019s requirement that the president must be a \u201cnatural born citizen.\u201d The Constitution doesn\u2019t define the term, but many constitutional scholars believe it means being born on U.S. soil of U.S. citizen parents.<\/p>\n Hillary for prosecution, not president! Join the sizzling campaign to put Mrs. Clinton where she really belongs<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n Obama\u2019s mother was a U.S. citizen at the time of his birth, but his father never was. Some critics argued his mother was too young to have passed along American citizenship to Obama.<\/p>\n Eventually, Obama publicly released in 2011 in a White House news conference a document he said was his Hawaii birth certificate.<\/p>\n The only official law enforcement investigation into the issue, authorized by Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, concluded the document was fraudulent.<\/p>\n Obama quipped Friday he was \u201cpretty confident about where I was born.\u201d<\/p>\n Hillary Clinton has labeled people who raise the eligibility issue as racists, accusing them of trying to \u201cdelegitimize\u201d the nation\u2019s first black president.<\/p>\n Clinton responded to Trump\u2019s remarks Friday saying he owes Americans an apology and that his campaign was founded on the \u201coutrageous lie\u201d Obama was not born in the U.S.<\/p>\n \u201cWe know who Donald is. For five years, he has led the birther movement to delegitimize our first black president,\u201d Clinton said at an event in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n In his brief remarks, Friday, however, Trump said it was Hillary Clinton and her 2008 presidential campaign of 2008 that \u201cstarted the birther controversy.\u201d<\/p>\n Media widely have insisted they investigated the claim and found no evidence for it. But Clinton\u2019s campaign manager in 2008, Patti Solis Doyle, admitted on Friday that a Clinton campaign staffer circulated the theory that Obama was born outside the U.S. and, therefore, was ineligible to serve, Breitbart reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n In a Twitter conversation with former George W. Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer, Doyle admitted she had fired a \u201crogue\u201d staffer who had spread the theory via email.<\/p>\n In an interview later with CNN\u2019s Wolf Blitzer, Doyle denied Hillary Clinton started the birther movement, but she confirmed that someone working for the campaign in late December 2007 in Iowa \u201cdid forward an email that promoted the conspiracy.\u201d<\/p>\n Doyle said she couldn\u2019t recall whether the person was a \u201cvolunteer coordinator\u201d or a paid staffer.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, Hillary made the decision immediately to let that person go,\u201d Doyle said. \u201cWe let that person go. And it was so, beyond the pale, Wolf, and so not worthy of the kind of campaign that certainly Hillary wanted to run.\u201d<\/p>\n Blitzer also brought up a memorandum by Clinton campaign strategist Mark Penn that proposed exploiting Obama\u2019s \u201clack of American roots.\u201d<\/p>\n Doyle asserted, and Blitzer agreed, that the memo had nothing to do with the circumstances of Obama\u2019s birth.<\/p>\n Clinton, meanwhile, said\u00a0 Trump\u2019s campaign \u201cwas founded on this outrageous lie\u201d that Obama is not a natural-born citizen.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no erasing it in history,\u201d she said. \u201cJust yesterday, Trump again refused to say with his own words that the president was born in the United States. Now, Donald\u2019s advisers have a temerity to say he\u2019s doing the country a service by pushing these lies.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, he isn\u2019t. He is feeding into the worst impulses \u2014 the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country,\u201d said Clinton.<\/p>\n \u201cBarack Obama was born in America, plain and simple, and Donald Trump owes him and the American people an apology.<\/p>\n \u201cDonald Trump looks at President Obama after eight years as our president \u2014 he still doesn\u2019t see him as an American. Think of how dangerous that is,\u201d she said. \u201cImagine a person in the Oval Office who traffics in conspiracy theories and refuses to let them go no matter what the facts are.\u201d<\/p>\n Reporters at the press conference Friday were irritated that Trump did not respond to their questions, which were shouted from the back of the room.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy won\u2019t you take questions?\u201d a London Daily Mail reporter shouted at him, the publication reported. \u201cWhy did it take you so long to say this?\u201d<\/p>\n What do YOU think? Is the birther issue finally over? Sound off in today\u2019s WND poll.<\/b><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Trump\u2019s senior communications adviser, Jason Miller, had said the issue already was closed as far as Trump was concerned.<\/p>\n \u201cIn 2011, Mr. Trump was finally able to bring this ugly incident to its conclusion by successfully compelling President Obama to release his birth certificate,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cHaving successfully obtained President Obama\u2019s birth certificate when others could not, Mr. Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n He added, \u201cMr. 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.\u201d<\/p>\n The Daily Mail reported that the \u201crumors\u201d about Obama\u2019s alleged ineligibility to be president started when Obama was whipping Clinton in their run for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008.<\/p>\n \u201cThey started in an anonymous email circulated by Clinton supporters,\u201d the report said, although \u201cClinton herself never publicly agreed with them.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the years, Trump had tweeted several challenges to Obama and others regarding the issue, one time urging hackers to find Obama\u2019s college records, which he has refused to release, \u201cand check \u2018place of birth.’\u201d<\/p>\n In a commentary, Matthew Vadum of the Capital Research Center<\/a> pointed out that perhaps Obama bears the blame for \u201cbirtherism.\u201d<\/p>\n After all, Obama authorized a biography for a book proposal before his time in public office that stated, at the time, \u201cBarack Obama, the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review, was born in Kenya\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDonald Trump simply rehashed the material Obama and Clinton provided. He was very late to the party,\u201d Vadum wrote.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n