The Trump campaign issued a statement with falsehoods about Trump’s long-propagated theory that President Obama was not born in the US.
Donald Trump said he plans in a speech Friday to address his false conspiracy theory that President Obama was born in Kenya.
Evan Vucci / AP
Hours after Trump refused to address the question of whether he believed Obama was born in the US in a Washington Post interview, his campaign on Thursday released a statement saying, "Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States."
1. Hillary Clinton first raised the birther issue to smear Obama during the 2008 election.
The most persistent lie about Obama's background began in 2004 when Andy Martin, a Illinois candidate distributed a press release — which was widely shared — saying that Obama was a Muslim who concealed his religion.
The idea that Obama was born outside the US evolved from that theory, and was then picked up by Obama's enemies -- including some Clinton supporters during the 2008 campaign and Republicans after he was elected.
But neither Clinton nor any of her staff ever publicly — or even privately to reporters who covered them closely — suggested that there was a mystery around Obama's birth. The first public figures to embrace the theory were Republican members of the House of Representatives, followed by Donald Trump.
Andrew Harnik / AP
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/2cCc6eU
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