Trump finally admits it: 'President Barack Obama was born in the United States'
Washington (CNN)Donald Trump finally admitted Friday that "President Barack Obama was born in the United States," reversing himself on the issue that propelled him into national politics five years ago.
Trump
sought to end his longstanding attempt to discredit the nation's first
African-American president with just a few sentences tacked on at the
end as he unveiled his new hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington.
But
the issue isn't likely to die down any time soon -- especially as Trump
continues to falsely blame Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton for
starting the "birtherism" controversy. Clinton said earlier Friday that
Trump's acknowledgment of Obama's birthplace doesn't go far enough and
that he must also apologize.
"For
five years, he has led the birther movement to delegitimize our first
black president," Clinton said at an event in Washington. "His campaign
was founded on this outrageous lie."
Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961.
The
President dismissed Trump's criticism Friday, joking with reporters at
the White House and saying, "I was pretty confident about where I was
born."
The birtherism controversy
exploded the previous night when Trump said in an interview with The
Washington Post that he still wasn't prepared to acknowledge Obama's
birthplace. Within a few hours, the campaign released a statement --
attributed to his spokesman -- that said Trump now believes Obama was
born in the United States.
Trump finally said the words out loud Friday morning.
"President
Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period," Trump said,
ignoring reporters' questions. "Now we all want to get back to making
America strong and great again."
The
developments over the past day were steeped in political motivations.
With 53 days before the presidential election, Trump is moving into a
margin of error race with Clinton and trying to broaden his appeal while
maintaining his grip on the GOP base. Trump has tried to improve his
dismal standing among minority voters and moderate Republicans in recent
weeks, many of whom see birtherism as racially motivated and an insult
to Obama.
He is also aiming to take
the issue of Obama's birthplace and legitimacy off the table by the
time of the crucial debate with Clinton September 26.
Trump has declined other opportunities during the past two weeks to refute his original birtherism.
When
local Philadelphia TV station WPVI asked Trump on September 2 about his
past statements, Trump replied: "I don't talk about it anymore. I told
you, I don't talk about it anymore."
He repeated the same line when asked about it during a gaggle with reporters aboard his plane last week.
And in an interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly last week, Trump again said, "I don't bother talking about it."
Trump's
extraordinary attempt to prove Obama was not a natural-born US citizen
and was therefore not qualified to be president started on the
conservative fringe but gathered momentum and became a major issue. The
White House initially tried to ignore the birtherism movement as the
work of conspiracy theorists, but Trump's huge media profile propelled
the issue through conservative media and it eventually gained traction.
The
saga only ended in a surreal and extraordinary moment in American
politics when the sitting President went to the White House briefing
room in April 2011 and produced his long-form birth certificate.
"We're
not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by
sideshows and carnival barkers," Obama said at the time, in a clear
reference to Trump.
Trump campaign blames Clinton
In
his statement Thursday night, Trump spokesman Jason 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
was referring to a controversy from the 2008 Democratic primary fight
between Obama and Clinton. In a March 2008 interview with "60 Minutes,"
Clinton said she took then-Sen. Obama's word that he was not a Muslim,
but when pressed if she believed he was, she replied, "No. No, there is
nothing to base that on -- as far as I know."
Clinton, however, was not questioning Obama's birthplace.
Clinton
slammed Trump's comments to the Post while speaking at a Congressional
Hispanic Caucus Institute event in Washington Thursday, saying he needs
to stop his "ugliness" and "bigotry."
"He
was asked one more time: Where was President Obama born? And he still
wouldn't say Hawaii. He still wouldn't say America. This man wants to be
our next president? When will he stop this ugliness, this bigotry?" she
said. "This is the best he can do. This is who he is. And so we need to
decide who we are."
Clinton's
campaign later tweeted, "President Obama's successor cannot and will not
be the man who led the racist birther movement. Period."
The 'birther' controversy
Trump's
embrace of the birther controversy seemed outlandish when it began. In
retrospect, it looks like a template for the fact-challenged approach he
has adopted in his presidential campaign.
After
Obama's news conference, the real-estate developer claimed credit for
getting the President to produce evidence of his birthplace.
"Today
I'm very proud of myself because I've accomplished something that
nobody else was able to accomplish," Trump said in New Hampshire, after
Obama's news conference.
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.
"Now,
I know that he's taken some flak lately, but no one is happier, no one
is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the
Donald," Obama said.
"And that's
because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter --
like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell?
And where are Biggie and Tupac?"
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