Krauthammer’s Take: Time for Trump to Disavow Birtherism

Although some prominent Republicans have publicly disavowed the theories over the years, others, including Trump, have validated the swirl of claims about the president’s birthplace and fed them with their own questioning or pointed silence.

But when Trump, at a town hall in New Hampshire, didn’t bother to correct an audience member who told him “We have a problem in this country“. You know lots of folks are saying that awful things are occurring and lots of folks are saying that. “But we have a bigger obligation to the American people to try to have a campaign that is about what’s really going on in the lives of Americans, and to do everything we can to eliminate from our political discourse the kind of comments that we heard yesterday”.

Christie said Trump must decide “how serious a candidate he wants to be”.

His campaign says he will comment on the incident over the next few days.

“These types of disgusting, over-the-top attacks only divide Americans and make it that much harder to find common ground on the important issues facing our country”, said Cory Fritz. “They need support, and their religious liberty is at stake”.

In a statement, Trump’s campaign said he was only acknowledging the man’s inquiry.

Except for Trump, the candidates articulated their opinions well and for the most part were polished, except for Ted Cruz, who spoke slowly and melodically, directly into the camera. But he seemed to double down on that last month, saying he still wasn’t sure but, “I presume he is”.

“The first thing I’m gonna do is tell you that if I’m elected president, I’m accepting no salary. Either way, he showed a complete lack of moral courage in that clip, and he has shown once again that he completely unqualified to be President of the United States“. He tried to back up his position by stating that that Republicans haven’t condemned Trump for his response.

As Ben Smith and Byron Tau have noted in Politico, the notion that President Obama is ineligible to be president comes “from Democratic, not Republican politics”. Democrats were quick to bash his response.

More broadly, Earnest faulted the Republican Party and those presidential candidates who haven’t reproached Trump over his previous statements about immigrants and women. The man’s friend, seated on his right, looked paralyzed with shock as his mouth was frozen into place by the sheer racism of the Trump supporter.

“If that person had been in my event I would have called him out in it”, Hillary Clinton said at a press conference after a campaign event in New Hampshire.

I despise Donald Trump the candidate, but at times I think I should despise his supporters more.

“You can’t control things that have been said”.

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who is close with McCain, said on MSNBC on Friday that Trump is “playing into this hateful narrative” about Obama. In 2008, during Clinton’s battle with Obama for the Democratic nomination, a top Clinton aide suggested that she should should portray herself as subtly more American than Obama.