Donald Trump Finally Admitted Obama Was Born in the United States

Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at Laconia Middle School September 15, 2016 in Laconia, New Hampshire.

And with that (and a promise to “make America great again”), Trump left the stage. In 2012, Trump offered to donate $5 million if Obama would produce records related to his citizenship.

Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton returned to the campaign trail on Thursday hoping to regain the ground she seemed to have lost to Republican rival Donald Trump during her absence through illness. “I finished it. I finished it, you know what I mean”, Trump said. See here and here and here.

Clinton said Friday Trump’s campaign was “founded on this outrageous lie” and “there is no erasing it”.

Hours later, campaign spokesman Jason Miller issued a statement that suggested Trump settled the issue in 2011. (Were you wrong to insist that the first African American president prove he was born in the United States?) He won’t acknowledge – despite tweets, statements and interviews – that he was the most prominent figure to fan the flames, not the one to put an end to the ludicrous accusation. “Even the MSNBC show Morning Joe admits that it was Clinton’s henchmen who first raised this issue, not Donald J. Trump”.

Today will be remembered as the day TV news outlets broadcast Donald Trump’s own lips saying President Obama was born in the United States.

The reemergence of the issue that boosted Trump with a fringe, overwhelmingly white, conservative wing threatens Trump at a time when the presidential race has tightened.

So now that we know Trump thinks Obama was born in the states, the question remains: Why did it take him so long to say it?

Nearly immediately after the Post interview took place, Trump senior communications adviser Jason Miller released the campaign’s official position on Obama’s birth, in a damage control effort.

In subsequent years, Obama poked fun at the birtherism controversy and used it to ridicule Trump, most memorably in a savage takedown at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner in 2011.

“He could have taken the quiet time to apologize”, she added, noting he did not “because he has lived a life of bigotry”. Reporters anticipated asking him about how and when he came to the conclusion that Obama was in fact born in the United States, despite five years of being the most vocal spokesperson for the conspiracy. But Trump continued to raise questions about Obama’s birthplace long after the birth certificate was released.

Clinton said Friday that Trump can’t just whitewash his past actions.

“I just don’t want to answer it yet”, he said. On Twitter, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon did not address that allegation, but said that acceptance that Obama was born in the USA comes up short. I want to focus on jobs.

“I’m going to be making a major statement on this whole thing and what Hillary did”, he told the Fox Business Network. He told Irish TV that year that Obama “should come clean”, Buzzfeed reported. The theory was pushed by some bloggers who backed Clinton’s primary campaign eight years ago, but Clinton has said Trump “promoted the racist lie” that sought to “delegitimise America’s first black president”.

Mr Obama declined to comment on Trump’s revival of the birther issue, telling reporters he had better things to do.