Say you wake up in dungeon. I pick a black American voter at random, and you guess whether or not they plan to vote for Trump. Get it right, get a million dollars and your freedom. Wrong, you get your balls hammered flat with a meat tenderizer. Which way do you think you’re gonna go?
(Note: for the purposes of this thought experiment, it is assumed that you have balls and that you would not enjoy having them crushed.)
Yes. No other possible explanation to no small degree precisely because no such persistent questions were seriously ever raised and continued about any other President or candidate before that.
Look historically and compare/contrast. George Romney, Mitt’s father, was born in Mexico and ran against Nixon in 1968. A few noises were made by a few but even those making the noises stated explicitly they would not challenge his eligibility.
So yeah. No other possible explanation.
Ted Cruz had the same type of birther questions about him.
Yes, there was evidence, but there was not proof. Do you not think that the person who holds the office should be able to prove he meets the Constitutional requirements? You kneejerkily ascribe questioning of his eligibility to racism. I ascribe it to his unusual background and personal story. Now I don’t know why anyone would question things after the form they wanted released was released. I also don’t know the degree to which Trump pushed the Birtherism angle after the release of the long form. But there hasn’t been any new evidence (as far as I know) and Trump just stated he is of the opinion that Obama was, in fact, born in the U.S.
Yes, there was proof – tons and tons of proof. There were Hawaiian newspaper (2 different papers) announcements announcing the birth of Barack Obama; there were the reports from family and friends; there was the 2008 birth certificate release; there was the official Hawaiian state press release reporting that all state records prove Obama was born in Hawaii. All of this was in 2008. That’s more than enough to constitute proof. The 2011 form told us nothing we didn’t already know. After the 2008 information release, and especially after the 2011 long-form release (which didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know), there was no reason whatsoever to question his birthplace, and Donald Trump continually did so until earlier this year.
If you rephrase this sentence to put it in active voice, you’ll discover why it’s a bad argument.
Wait, so Romney’s eligibility was looked at. And so was McCain’s. I think everyone’s eligibility should be looked at. And it would be logical that those with more exotic backgrounds would be looked at a bit more closely. McCain’s eligibility was fairly easy to figure out. I assume Romney’s was, too. And if Obama had released his long form certificate immediately, the Birtherism notion would have had much less fuel.
And as someone else just posted, Ted Cruz’s eligibility was also looked at. So to White guys and a Hispanic also had their eligibility looked at. But when it happens to a Black guy, RACISM!
Obama didn’t have his long-form, the state of Hawaii did, and the state of Hawaii publicly confirmed his birthplace in 2008. There was a mountain of proof of his birthplace in 2008 and not a shred of evidence for anywhere else. His eligibility was looked at in great detail in 2008 and nothing was found except lots of proof he was born in Hawaii.
Obama never did reveal the time machine he must have used to get his birth announcement printed in the Honolulu newspaper.
Didn’t Obama have to agree to have it released? That’s my recollection, loose as it is.
How many posts are you going to ignore that tell you that HE DOESN’T HAVE THE LONG FORM. HE CAN’T RELEASE IT BECAUSE IT IS NOT IN HIS POSSESSION. IT IS AN ITEM THAT HE CAN NOT RELEASE BECAUSE HE DOESN’T CONTROL IT, HAVE POSSESSION OF IT, OR DECIDE WHO CAN SEE IT. IT IS CONTROLLED BY THE HAWAIIAN GOVERNMENT. HOW CAN HE RELEASE HIS LONG FORM EARLIER THAN 2011 IF HE DOES NOT HAVE ACCESS TO IT OR POSSESSION OF IT OR CONTROL OF WHO SEES IT? SHORT ANSWER-- HE CAN’T.
Plus your claim that the Birtherism would have had less fuel if he “had released his long form immediately” is bull because there was plenty of continued racist speculation even after the Hawaiian government released it in 2011.
Obama asked to have it released and the state of Hawaii said no for years, until 2011, since the state of Hawaii didn’t want to start a precedent. This wasn’t a public document, or even a private document – it was a confidential state record that wasn’t for public release.
And the long-form didn’t do shit, since Trump and the other birthers continued birthering for years afterwards. The birther conspiracy was never about birth certificates, which is proven by the continuance of birtherism long after 2011. It was always about racism and deligitimizing and de-Americanizing our first black president.
It might have been reasonable in 2008 to ask for proof Obama was eligible to be President. That proof was provided promptly. It was not reasonable, after all that proof, to continue to spread baseless lies and allegations about his birthplace.
Wrong. And wrong. Nobody has ever litigated the exact definition of “natural-born citizen” in such a way as to definitively determine whether or not it includes the peculiarities of these two cases (as opposed to the non-peculiarity of birth to a citizen mother within the borders of a US state). That’s why McCain ended up getting a Senate resolution affirming him as a natural-born citizen. (If Trump had been really clever, he would have trolled Cruz by publicly urging him to do likewise, knowing perfectly well that about 95 of the other 99 senators wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire.)
Don’t spend your Four Pinocchios all in one place. Actually, maybe you should wait and see if this double-down earns the “Pants On Fire” upgrade.
Have you seen none of the many other threads we have done on this subject? I really don’t understand why we are discussing this like it is a new topic. 
Absolutely. I’m not a Trump supporter but I strongly dislike the biased media.
Why were the media suddenly digging up ancient history anyway? Trump’s connection to the birthers was several years ago. He hasn’t mentioned that since becoming a candidate a year ago.
It’s the idiot journalists that dug this up again. Hoping that he still supported the birthers. Turns out Trump has moved on to more important issues. No one gives a crap about a lame duck President. The birther debate lost steam years ago.
It was his gawddamn press conference, after he dropped hints all over the fucking place that he had something important to pass along. BTW, Where’s the 5 million bucks he’s supposed to donate to charity the instant it is shown that Obama was born in the U.S., and what were those interesting things his special investigators supposedly found out about Obama birth?
W.T.F?