Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation

Trump allies scramble to defend false 'birther' claim as candidate shifts views

This article is more than 7 years old

Chris Christie suggests Republican presidential nominee gave up saying Barack Obama was not born in the US years ago

Donald Trump’s closest allies struggled on Sunday to defend the Republican nominee, falsely saying he gave up the lie that Barack Obama was not born in the United States years ago.

Trump has falsely claimed that the president was born outside the US since at least 2011, when he began to air the conspiracy theory in TV interviews. Even since Obama released his birth certificate, in April 2011, and Trump was roundly mocked for the lie, the businessman has continued to question the president’s birthplace in the face of all facts and logic.

As recently as February 2015, Trump continued to suggest the certificate was forged, saying: “Now all we have to do is find out whether or not it’s real.”

On Friday, Trump claimed to have “ended” the conspiracy, which he blamed on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign, and said he now believed the veracity of the birth certificate. In an interview broadcast on Sunday, however, his vice-presidential candidate still struggled to account for his running mate’s behaviour.

“He brought that issue to an end this week,” Mike Pence told ABC’s This Week. “It is a fact, and Donald Trump and I have acknowledged that without hesitation.”

In fact, on Thursday Trump refused to admit that Obama was born in Hawaii.

New Jersey governor Chris Christie, the first major politician to endose Trump after abandoning his own presidential campaign, similarly tried to wall off the candidate by laying down a series of falsehoods.

“It’s just not true that he kept [the claims] up for five years,” Christie told CNN’s State of the Union, calling the matter “a contentious issue” – although in fact only a fringe group of conservatives ever embraced the so-called “birther” movement. “Donald Trump has said it’s a done issue now.”

Last September, Christie said he “would correct” Trump about the lie, telling NBC: “I’d say that the president is a Christian and he was born in this country. Those two things are self-evident.”

But on Sunday the governor falsely laid blame at the feet of Clinton allies – it has been alleged that longtime aide Sidney Blumenthal spread the rumour in 2008 – saying that it was they who created and spread the conspiracy theory. Like Pence, Christie also falsely claimed that Trump has not indulged the lie for years.

“It’s not like he was talking about it on a regular basis,” Christie said.

In fact, the businessman has regularly raised the conspiracy theory. In August 2012, for instance, Trump wrote: “An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama’s birth certificate is a fraud.”

A year later, he wrote: “How amazing, the State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s ‘birth certificate’ died in plane crash today. All others lived.”

And in September 2014, among dozens of tweets, he wrote: “Attention all hackers: You are hacking everything else so please hack Obama’s college records (destroyed?) and check ‘place of birth.’”

Clinton’s running mate, Tim Kaine, told CNN on Sunday: “Sidney Blumenthal has categorically denied that but Sidney Blumenthal is not running for president. Let’s talk about Trump.”

Trump, he said, had courted racism and delegitimization of the president with the theory. “Did you believe it?” he said he would ask Trump. “In which case, how gullible were you? Or were you just trying to cynically play to the darkest emotions in American life?”

The lie, Kaine concluded, was evidence that Trump “has proven himself unfit” for the presidency.

Pence and Christie were also forced to defend Trump for his insinuations about violence against Clinton and his refusal to share tax returns with voters, breaking 40 years of precedent.

On Friday, Trump said Clinton’s secret service protection should “disarm immediately” so that he could “see what happens to her”. Pence claimed it was “absolute nonsense” to hear an encouragement of violence in those remarks.

“His comment was that if she didn’t have security, she’d change her attitude about the right to keep and bear arms. And I’ll bet that’s probably true,” Pence said. He added falsely that Clinton has ‘private security’, though she has had secret service protection for decades. Although Pence and Trump also enjoy that protection, Trump also employs private security.

Christie said Trump was within his rights to not release his tax returns, even though no law prohibits their release while under audit and every candidate since 1976 has released returns.

Trump was “following the advice of his lawyers and his counsel”, Christie said.

Earlier this month, Pence released 10 years of tax returns. This week, House speaker Paul Ryan, the 2012 vice-presidential nominee and top Republican in Washington, said Trump should release his own.

“I released mine. I think he should release his,” Ryan told reporters.

Trump’s campaign manager, meanwhile, tried to fend off scathing remarks by Robert Gates, defense secretary for George W Bush and Barack Obama and a widely respected leader with 50 years experience.

On Saturday, Gates wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that Trump was “beyond repair” in his understanding of the world, “oblivious to the reality” of the Middle East and “willfully ignorant”.

Trump responded by calling Gates “dopey” at a campaign event and writing on Twitter that the former CIA director had created a “total disaster”. On CNN, Christie rejected a suggestion that he would not tolerate such insulting behavior in one of his own children.

On CBS’s Face the Nation, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said Gates, who helped restore stability to Iraq during its brutal, post-invasion civil war, did not appreciate the threat of terrorism.

“He acts like terrorism is something like the weather, it just happens, and we as Americans know that’s not true,” she said.

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed