After years of conspiracy-mongering on Obama, Trump admits: He was born in U.S.

WASHINGTON – After trafficking for five years in racially tinged conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama’s birthplace, Donald Trump attempted to shake off that past with a 33-second non-apology Friday.

He ended a rally at his new hotel with the words: “President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period.”

It took him long enough.

Trump spent years pouring gasoline over embers of unfounded rumour that the nation’s first black president was born in Africa. Never mind its inaccuracy — it was irrelevant too: Obama was eligible to be president wherever he was born, because his mother was from Kansas.

Yet Trump latched onto it.

He talked about hiring a private investigator; demanded to see Obama’s long-form birth certificate; then when it surfaced, he repeatedly dismissed its authenticity; later when a government employee died in a plane crash, Trump questioned whether it was an assassination and cover-up; then he sidestepped questions about it.

The issue made him a right-wing political star.

He started appearing on cable news to discuss it. His name began appearing in presidential polls. He let it linger, until this week — when the issue finally reached a breaking point. In a Washington Post interview, he again declined to say whether the president was born in the U.S.

His rivals jumped on it. Hillary Clinton raised the issue Friday while speaking to a black women’s event.

“(Trump) led the birther movement to delegitimize our first black president. His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie,” Clinton said Friday.

“There is no erasing it in history.”

Political pundits listed one obvious reason why Clinton was so eager to engage on this issue: If minority voters show up to vote like they did for Obama, with a record 66 per cent turnout the last time, she almost certainly becomes president.

The Clinton team is already trying to involve the president in this election — in a phenomenon rare for a second-term incumbent, he’s more popular than either of the major party nominees and has more campaign events scheduled. His wife Michelle spoke at a rally Friday and addressed the issue.

Obama was also asked about it. He replied: “I’m shocked that a question like that has come up at a time when we have so many other things to do. Well, I’m not that shocked actually. It’s fairly typical.”

The Trump campaign told reporters it intended to cleanse itself of the issue, once and for all. But Clinton’s team intends to baste him in his old words — and roast him in them until election day Nov. 8.

When a reporter tweeted that Trump intended to put the issue to rest, a Clinton campaign spokesman tweeted: “Good luck with that.” Clinton drove the point home later in the day when she tweeted, “The birther lie is what turned Trump from an ordinary reality TV star into a political figure. That origin story can’t be unwritten …

“Trump has spent years peddling a racist conspiracy aimed at undermining the first African-American president. He can’t just take it back.”

He attempted to do that at the end of a promotional event at his new Washington hotel, with veterans who support him. At the end of the event, and the end of his speech, he spent a half-minute addressing the controversy.

He didn’t say sorry.

But in five short sentences, he delivered two more whoppers. He took credit for forcing Obama to release his birth certificate — the one he’d repeatedly claimed was false. And he blamed Clinton’s 2008 campaign for the birther controversy.

Some Clinton supporters did argue that the rookie senator with the exotic name and Muslim ancestry might not appear American enough to win a general election. There’s no record whatsoever of Clinton herself, or anyone close to her, suggesting he was born anywhere but in Hawaii.