Birth of the Birther Story

I was listening to the radio on Friday when the top of the hour news announced that Trump had accused Hillary Clinton of starting the Birther issue during the 2008 primary.  Intriguing though that was, the more interesting bit followed.  The newsreader then announced that there was no evidence for this claim.  I cannot recall the last time I heard fact-checking as part of the newsfeed.  Basically, the news is that Trump is lying about Hillary and now here's the weather.  Huh.

Later that day, evidence that the 2008 Clinton campaign had considered a strategy to paint Obama as less American because he spent a considerable chunk of his childhood in Indonesia.  Of course, Hillary says they never used that tact.  But then it comes out the Sid Blumenthal, a Hillary intimate who is coincidentally also involved in the interminable email scandal, is reported to have handed the Birther story to the McClatchy News Service.  McClatchy sent a reporter to Kenya to check it out.  Then there is the picture of Obama in Muslim garb that was released by the Clinton Campaign.

 

I am now annoyed that the newsreader offered that fact-check.  Whether you agree or not, there is evidence for the claim that questions of Obama's birth started in the Clinton campaign.  Well, in truth, the birther debate started with Obama himself.  Snopes confirms that in 1991, Obama was shown on the bio page of a booklet as "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia."  In fact, some have claimed that Obama gamed the system to get into more prestigious schools than his grades would have allowed by claiming to be a foreign exchange student.  Thus, Obama has refused to release his college transcripts that would reveal such.  Maybe.  More likely, his grades are mediocre and that would not have helped his campaign.

Why is this in the news again?  Hillary has attacked Trump for his participation in the Birther debate in 2011.  Trump hammered the topic sufficiently that Obama finally released his long form birth certificate which ended - for most - the debate.  Thus Trump's claim that he "finished it."