Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:11 pm
Exactly a week after top Donald Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani made the bogus claim that his candidate denounced birtherism – a phenomenon Trump helped create – years ago, the Republican nominee said in a Washington Post interview that he won’t acknowledge the fact that Barack Obama was born in the United States.
“I’ll answer that question at the right time,” Trump said, according to the Post. “I just don’t want to answer it yet.”
Of course, the birther conspiracy was all Trump wanted to talk about just a few short years ago, but he now says it would distract from important policy issues – even though Trump has never shown a desire to learn about or discuss policy on a substantive level.
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“I don’t talk about it anymore,” he told the newspaper. “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.”
Trump’s comments come as even his running mate, Mike Pence, and campaign manager Kellyanne Conway claim that their candidate now believes that Obama is, in fact, American-born.
On Conway’s remarks that Trump no longer subscribes to the birther movement, the Republican nominee said that she was only speaking for herself, not him: “She’s allowed to speak what she thinks. I want to focus on jobs. I want to focus on other things.”
The most disturbing part of this is that most people – especially the media – simply accept that Donald Trump, a major party nominee for president, doesn’t believe the current commander-in-chief is a legitimate American. He just says he doesn’t want to talk about it and – poof – everybody moves on.
But even now, years after he began perpetuating this nonsensical myth, it’s shocking and inexcusable – and he should be held accountable for it.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
