The Republican lawmaker challenging Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) took a page from the birther playbook earlier this month when he joked at a political breakfast that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya.
The lawmaker, state Sen. Owen Hill, made the remarks at a Denver County Republican Party First Friday Breakfast on Nov. 1. Audio of his remarks were obtained by Buzzfeed.
Hill was talking about his work Christian children’s charity Compassion International that did work in “the largest slum outside of Nairobi.”
“You spend time out there and little kids are running around barefoot in these kinds of streets and you ask them what they want to be, they want to be an astronaut, they want to be a physicist, a marine biologist, one kid even told me he wanted to be President of the United States. I held back my snarky comment that said ‘Well, you know what, we already have someone from Kenya as President of the United States.'”
Hill, the chairman of the Colorado Senate Conservatives Fund, is one of a number of Republicans seeking the nomination for Udall’s Senate seat.
Hill is not the only Republican lawmaker to make a crack about Obama’s heritage. In October, North Carolina state Rep. Larry Pittman (R) joked that Obama is actually from and still loyal to Kenya.
Obama, of course, was born in the United States and has gone so far as to even present his longform birth certificate to quell fringe suspicion claims that he was born in another country.
Photo credit: Owen Hill for Senate.
