Trump just said that he “finished” the birther controversy by forcing President Obama to release his birth certificate in 2011. But for literally years after the release of the long form birth certificate Trump continued to claim it was either a forgery or that it didn’t establish that President Obama was born in the United States
Courtesy of The Daily Beast Gideon Resnick here’s a sampling of Trump tweets – post-birth certificate release – claiming it was a forgery.
Yup definitely resolved in 2011 pic.twitter.com/kXy8g5rLBs
— Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick) September 16, 2016
Of course, there’s more than Twitter. Here’s MediaMatters file on all the times he claimed President Obama wasn’t an American citizen after the birth certificate release.
Hillary Clinton didn’t start birtherism. That’s a flat out lie. Trump didn’t “finish” it, even in the preposterous sense in which he’s claiming that he did the country a “great service” by forcing the release of the birth certificate and settling the matter. Because he continued to claim it was a forgery for years.
As I said earlier, birtherism is not about a factual error. It’s conscious and deliberate racist agitation. Indeed, it was birtherism which built Trump’s political profile and his base among white supremacists which enabled him to mount his successful primary campaign. His political career was built birtherism and racism. He’s never apologized. Indeed, he’s said he deserves praise for it. So he’s doubled down on more lies, apologized for nothing, and says he deserves credit for what he did. Think about that.
