Stinky Racist Disqualified

Donald Trump didn’t create birtherism but he co-opted and made it his own the same way Elon Musk inserted himself as a “founder” of Tesla.

The birther thing was a lie racist right-wingers made up to claim 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama was ineligible to be president of the United States because he was not born in this country. Their claim was that he was born in Kenya. The only detail they had to base this claim on is that Obama’s father was from Kenya which is pretty flimsy evidence.

They based the lie on Obama’s birth certificate, arguing that they hadn’t seen it which must mean there’s something amiss. Never mind that we’ve never seen any presidential candidate’s birth certificate or that we’ve never asked to see one before.

A birth announcement for Barack Obama was published in a Honolulu newspaper on August 13, 1961. If Obama was born in Kenya, then some genius knew this Kenyan newborn was going to be president, so he placed a birth announcement in the Sunday Honolulu Advertiser. Or even better, someone time-traveled.

In 2011, Donald Trump renewed the birther lie.

On the View, March 23, 2011, he said, “Why doesn’t he show his birth certificate? There’s something on that birth certificate that he doesn’t like.” Candidate Obama released a short form of his birth certificate in 2008.

On Fox News, on March 28, 2011, he said, “He’s spent millions of dollars trying to get away from this issue. Millions of dollars in legal fees trying to get away from this issue. And I’ll tell you what, I brought it up, just routinely, and all of a sudden a lot facts are emerging and I’m starting to wonder myself whether or not he was born in this country.” President Obama had not spent “millions of dollars” trying to get away from the issue. This is another Trump lie.

On the Laura Ingraham Show, on March 30, 2011, he lied, “He doesn’t have a birth certificate, or if he does, there’s something on that certificate that is very bad for him. Now, somebody told me – and I have no idea if this is bad for him or not, but perhaps it would be – that where it says ‘religion,’ it might have ‘Muslim.’ And if you’re a Muslim, you don’t change your religion, by the way.” I don’t know about not being able to change your religion if you’re a Muslim but I do know that religion isn’t listed on a U.S. birth certificate. Trump should know this unless he’s never seen his own birth certificate.

On the Today Show, April 7, 2011, he said, “I have people that have been studying (Obama’s birth certificate) and they cannot believe what they’re finding … I would like to have him show his birth certificate, and can I be honest with you, I hope he can. Because if he can’t, if he can’t, if he wasn’t born in this country, which is a real possibility … then he has pulled one of the great cons in the history of politics.” Trump never told us who those people “studying” Obama’s birth certificate were or what they found.

On Morning Joe, April 7, 2011, he said, “His grandmother in Kenya said, ‘Oh, no, he was born in Kenya and I was there and I witnessed the birth.’ She’s on tape. I think that tape’s going to be produced fairly soon. Somebody is coming out with a book in two weeks, it will be very interesting.” This is a lie. His grandmother asserted multiple times that President Obama was born in the United States.

 On April 27, 2011, President Obama made public his long-form birth certificate that would resolve the issue, right? Nope.

In a May 4, 2012 interview with the Daily Beast, Trump said, “He didn’t know he was running for president, so he told the truth. The literary agent wrote down what he said … He said he was born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia … Now they’re saying it was a mistake. Just like his Kenyan grandmother said he was born in Kenya, and she pointed down the road to the hospital, and after people started screaming at her, she said, ‘Oh, I mean Hawaii.’ Give me a break.” More lies.

Trump told Wolf Blitzer on May 29, 2012, “A lot of people do not think it was an authentic certificate. … Many people do not think it was authentic. His mother was not in the hospital. There are many other things that came out. And frankly if you would report it accurately I think you’d probably get better ratings than you’re getting.” More lies.

On August 6, 2012, Trump tweeted, “An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama’s birth certificate is a fraud.” We never did find out who that “credible” source was.

In August 2013, to ABC News, Trump said, “Was it a birth certificate? You tell me. Some people say that was not his birth certificate. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. I’m saying I don’t know. Nobody knows.” Then what was it?

On December 12, 2013, Trump tweeted, “How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s ‘birth certificate’ died in plane crash today. All others lived.” How vile is it to use a tragedy to push a racist conspiracy theory?

In May 2014, Trump was interviewed in Ireland and said, “Well, I don’t know – did he do it? … Well, a lot of people don’t agree with you and a lot of people feel it wasn’t a proper certificate.” A lot of racists.

On May 27, 2014, while speaking to the National Press Club, Trump said, “There are three things that could happen. And one of them did happen. He was perhaps born in Kenya. Very simple, OK? He was perhaps born in this country. But said he was born in Kenya because if you say you were born in Kenya, you got aid and you got into colleges. People were doing that. So perhaps he was born in this country, and that has a very big chance. Or, you know, who knows?” It’s not every day that a lying racist gets to speak to the National Press Club.

On January 6, 2016, Trump told Wolf Blitzer, “Who knows about Obama? … Who knows, who knows? Who cares right now?… I have my own theory on Obama. Someday I will write a book, I will do another book, and it will do very successfully.” Where’s that book?

On September 16, 2016, Trump told The Washington Post, “I’ll answer that question at the right time. I just don’t want to answer it yet … I don’t talk about it anymore. The reason I don’t is because then everyone is going to be talking about it as opposed to jobs, the military, the vets, security.”

Days before the 2016 election, Trump finally accepted that President Obama was born in the United States and gave himself credit for ending the rumors…after spreading them for at least five years.

The birther movement is racist. Nazis and white supremacists loved it. In addition to Trump spreading it, it was shared by Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Michele Bachmann, David Vitter, Mike Coffman, Mike Huckabee, Nathan Deal, Roy Blunt, Jean Schmidt, Richard Shelby, Roy Moore, Fox News goons, and former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio who put together a task force to travel to Hawaii to prove President Obama was born in Kenya. We’re still waiting for that task force to report back.

Republicans never asked white candidates to prove their citizenship or accused them of being unqualified, even the white Republican candidate running against Obama in 2016 who was NOT born in the United States. John McCain was born in Panama which is an entirely different country than the United States. In 2016, they didn’t question the eligibility of presidential candidate Canadian-born Ted Cruz, whose father is a Cuban immigrant.

The best defense for Republicans over birtherism is that it’s hypocritical partisanship. There’s some of that to it, yes, but it’s mostly racist. They only asked the black guy if he’s qualified. By the way, where’s Trump’s birth certificate?

Now the real irony here is that after Trump spent years claiming President Obama wasn’t qualified to be president of the United States, it’s now Donald Trump who is not qualified. But as we already know, Republicans don’t detect irony.

In 2020, Trump promoted the lie about the eligibility of Kamala Harris.

Donald Trump is a racist…and a smelly one at that.

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