Pence Breaks From Trump’s Favorite Pet Conspiracy, Says Obama Born In US

Matt Hamilton/The Daily Citizen Mike Pence speaks Tuesday at the Dalton Convention Center.
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

Everything old is new again, as vice presidential hopeful and Indiana Gov. Mike Pence clarified on Wednesday that he, for one, believes President Barack Obama is a natural-born American citizen.

“Well I believe Barack Obama was born in Hawaii,” Pence told reporters, as quoted by NBC News. “I accept his birthplace. I just don’t know where he’s coming from on foreign policy and on economics and on Obamacare.”

Pence also declined to say whether he thinks his running mate Donald Trump should apologize for aggressively pushing the conspiracy theory that Obama was not born on American soil.

The governor’s remarks come after Trump on Tuesday refused to back off his previously stated support for the birther movement, a rag-tag group of anti-Obama conspiracy theorists that he and other conservative leaders signal-boosted into the mainstream in 2011.

Asked about the controversy, Trump told NBC’s Ali Vitali simply, “I don’t talk about it.”

Latest Livewire

Notable Replies

  1. NOtHING compared TO HITlary, a SHAPE-shifting LIZard overloard born in the somewhere in Alpha Draconis star sYSTem.

  2. Trump: Pence also supported Iraq war and I didn’t. We are grown up and agree to disagree. Bottom line: All Blacks, with the sole exception of My African American, belong in Kenya.

  3. Avatar for theod theod says:

    Where was Pence publicly on this issue oh so many months ago? I believe he was silently nodding and winking along with the whole GOP artifice that believed anything anti-Obama was good for them, however phony, racist, and dumb*. And so now they have a party leader with exactly those characteristics. They built that.

    *nobody ever said that Obama’s American mother wasn’t American or his mother, thus ending the faux controversy

  4. Obama’s birthplace is a fact, like gravity and the heliocentric solar system. Who cares if Pence believes it or not? He doesn’t legitimize facts.

  5. Avatar for caltg caltg says:

    Please note that Pence is still hedging: “I believe Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.” He does not say,"I know Obama was born in Hawaii." He is still just as much of a slime as Drumpf.

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

34 more replies

Participants

Avatar for system1 Avatar for pluckyinky Avatar for ajaykalra Avatar for daveminnj Avatar for littlegirlblue Avatar for marby Avatar for mmurdoch Avatar for mattinpa Avatar for nowarino Avatar for leftflank Avatar for epicurus Avatar for theod Avatar for steviedee111 Avatar for mickeyg Avatar for mantan Avatar for sniffit Avatar for lastroth Avatar for theghostofeustacetilley Avatar for maxaroo Avatar for benthere Avatar for nancycolorado Avatar for caltg Avatar for 1american Avatar for maximus

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: