The gag, of course, being that Gore lost; and that Hillary – heaven forbid! – may yet lose; but that Obama, with less time in the legislature than either, got the win against McCain: the military officer who, AFAICT, served more years in the House and in the Senate than Al Gore and Hillary Clinton put together.
A long memory and nothing to lose, since he cut off their access to his campaign. I wonder if he regrets doing that.
Won’t he just write a check from the Trump Foundation? Which is of course *other *people’s money.
I thought that was how he paid every obligation to nonprofits (and apparently FL prosecutors).
Issues like this, which might be very problematic or fatal to a normal politician, are no problem at all for Trump for the simple reason that Trump does not live in the real world. He’ll just ignore the matter and, if inescapably confronted, he’ll lie about it – problem solved. Consider how this particular announcement was handled:
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Trump scheduled a press conference and issued a short statement saying that Obama was born in the US, completely contradicting everything he’s been saying in all the years he was at the forefront of the birther movement.
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Trump blamed Hillary Clinton for starting the birther movement, which is categorically false as neither she nor her campaign had anything to do with it.
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Trump credited himself with putting a stop to the birther movement, which is a lie so brazen that it’s hard to find adequate words to describe it.
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Trump then abruptly left the press conference without taking questions, leaving the two big lies like giant steaming turds.
It boggles the mind that anyone could take this idiot seriously for a millisecond, let alone actually vote for him.
Thanks. I actually figured it was “Lame Stream Media” (popularized by Sarah Palin) --perhaps this evocation is intentional, even if Liberal Spin Machine is the primary meaning.
Silly, in any case, of course. Who is getting millions of dollars in free publicity every time he opens his pie-hole?
That works as well as lame stream media. 
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- The initial 2008 story credited Clinton/Hillary supporters for suggesting that Obama was not born in the U.S.A… It appears that the LSM didn’t properly vet yet another story. SOP?
This story would have been a non-story in 2008 IF the media outlets had done a proper job of verifying the source(s) and story.
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Trump takes credit for forcing the release of Obama’s Hawaiian record of birth. Credit should be shared with many, many, many other people and groups who demanded an answer from a government official.
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Trump played the LSM like chumps. The LSM were punked, big time. They were left drooling like Pavlov’s dogs waiting for a tidbit of food. After, once again, being asked about Obama’s BC, Trump said he would make a statement about it. When he chose to make a statement about it. The LSM went into a feeding frenzy. Their choice. With thousands of daily stories to chose from, the LSM chose this zombie news as their story du jour.
Obama said something about moving on, Trump said something about moving on, Hillary thanks the media for a job well done.
Odd. The rest of us are saying that it was exactly a Clinton *supporter *who started the story, which means that Trump is simply lying when he said it was the Clinton campaign. That means that the media got it exactly **right **in 2008 and you’ve got it exactly **backward **now.
SOP?
It does. The trouble is, you have no idea how utterly inept and childish it sounds.
No one’s ever denied that it was probably Clinton supporters who started the evidence-free birther conspiracy theory. There’s no evidence her campaign had anything to do with it.
No, the media correctly found the mountain of evidence for Obama’s birth in Hawaii and pointed out that there wasn’t a single shred of evidence he was born anywhere else. What kept it alive were liars and idiots who spread an evidence free and completely baseless conspiracy theory, and the Republican enablers who refused to utterly reject these baseless claims.
The answers were provided in 2008, in the form of Obama’s birth certificate, newspaper announcements, and official statements from the state of Hawaii that there was no doubt in their records that he was born in Hawaii.
Trump can take credit for spreading evidence-free lies for years afterwards, including after the long-form certificate was released in 2011. It was never about evidence and records, since they were all provided and the birthering continued. It was always about deligitimizing and de-Americanizing our first black president.
Trump certainly lied to the media and the American people for many years when he was spreading an evidence-free conspiracy theory.
My question to you – is Trump so stupid and credulous that he believed for years baseless and evidence free claims about Obama’s birthplace, despite the mountain of proof (including his birth certificate) that he was born in Hawaii? Or is he so dishonest that he didn’t care that there was no evidence for, and a mountain of proof against, his baseless conspiracy-theory-mongering?
I’ll deny it. Maybe it was spread by someone who claimed to be a Clinton supporter, but there were so many Republicans who claimed to be Clinton supporters (anyone remember PUMA?) that it’s by far the simpler explanation to assume that the birther nonsense was likewise started by a Republican claiming to be a Clinton supporter.
That’s just guessing. There is evidence suggesting it came from some of the PUMAs who actually were Hillary Clinton supporters. I doubt they believed in birtherism, or even cared if it was true – they were just desperate to beat Obama and grabbed anything they could (which doesn’t excuse it). It started long before the general election.
Thank you, Sarah Palin, for that always insightful, fact packed and informed political analysis.
This discussion is becoming an Escher drawing.
Sidney Blumenthal. If you can’t trust a Democrat, who can you trust? He’s Hillary’s close buddy. That’s rock solid proof to me.
“During that meeting, Mr. Blumenthal and I met together in my office and he strongly urged me to investigate the exact place of President Obama’s birth, which he suggested was in Kenya."
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article102354777.html
So you’re afraid to answer my question? Why is my question so terrifying? Seems simple to me – is Trump so dumb and credulous that he accepts claims like this with a mountain of proof against them, or is he so dishonest that he doesn’t care? Whether this is true or not about Blumenthal has nothing to do with Trump’s continuous spreading of evidence-free lies from 2011 to 2016.
Can you answer the question, or will you just dodge again?
The reporter says Blumenthal said it, Blumenthal says he did not. Rock solid, indeed. Really, who could ask for more? Especially compared to the contemptible lie that Trump backed birtherism, when all we got are videotapes and quotes of him doing exactly that.
I think about the closest anyone has come to such a study is a poll which found that a significant number of Trump supporters are antivaxxers.
The fact that so many “alt-right” “White culture” nuts endorse him lends some credence. Of course, the fact that he has denounced, renounced and condemned them and told them to go fuck themselves speaks well of him!
Oh, what? He didn’t? Well, then, never mind.
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I would like to know who these Clinton/Hillary supporters are? Wouldn’t you? Did the story come from Clinton’s/Hillary’s team, or not? Did the “reporters” simply make up a story to help Hillary’s election, or were they just spreading rumors. Reporters making up rumors? :eek: Say it ain’t so.
I find it fascinating that it took three years for U.S. Senator/President Obama to get his birth certificate released. Or was the release more of a Obama’s-relying-on-the-kindness-of-strangers kind of thing? Did Hawaii’s Dept of Health just feel sorry for the guy and release the BC or were they just tired of getting requests for the document?
*Hawaii Department of Health response
The director of Hawaii’s Department of Health, Chiyome Fukino, issued a statement confirming that the state held Obama’s “original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures”. Noting “there have been numerous requests for Sen. Barack Hussein Obama’s official birth certificate”, Fukino explained that the department was prohibited by state law from releasing it to “persons who do not have a tangible interest in the vital record.” She stated: “No state official, including Gov. Linda Lingle, has ever instructed that this vital record be handled in a manner different from any other vital record in the possession of the State of Hawaii.”
According to the website TVNewser, CNN’s researchers stated in 2009 that the original birth certificate no longer existed, as Hawaii discarded all paper birth records in 2001, and the certification of live birth was the official copy. Contradicting this report, Janice Okubo, public information officer for the Hawaii DOH, said “We don’t destroy vital records.”* ( I guess CNN’s crack research team was wrong?) The Health Department’s director emphasized the assertion:
I, Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, have seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen. I have nothing further to add to this statement or my original statement issued in October 2008, over eight months ago.
Joshua Wisch, a spokesman for the Hawaii Attorney General’s office, stated in 2011 that the original “long form” birth certificate — described by Hawaiian officials as a “record of live birth” kept in the archives of the Hawaii Department of Health is “… a Department of Health record and it can’t be released to anybody”, including President Obama. Wisch added that state law does not authorize photocopying such records.
Personally, I took Dr. Chiyome Fukino’s statement at face value and considered the issue to be settled. In 2011.
The news media seems to resurect this issue whenever there is a slow news day or Hillary/Obama need a boost in their saggy poll numbers.