Birtherism is a Home Run for Trump

Trump Wins Four Ways on Birtherism.   He sows seeds of doubt in fertile soil of white Republicans.  He stays in the news.   He becomes a hero for ending this "ugly incident".   And the ugliness was all the fault of conniving Hillary.

It is politics at its most ugly, the media and voters at their most manipulated.   It is Trump at his most successful.    

Hillary's supporters think that "birtherism" is a loser for Trump.  They think Trump's birtherism claims (asserting, notwithstanding authoritative evidence that Barrack Obama was born in a hospital in Hawaii, that he was in fact born in Kenya and is illegitimate to be president) show Trump to be a wild, untrustworthy con man.  They think it buttresses the argument that Trump is unsuitable to be president, by temperament and character.  They think they are doing Hillary a favor by bringing it up.   I disagree.   

Birtherism helped Trump.

April, 2015

Seeds of doubt.  I have spoken to too many people of intelligence and professional success who carry doubts about Obama--or who say they are certain Trump is correct--to underestimate the success Trump had in sowing doubt.   These include a banker with a major regional bank who has responsibility for multi-million dollar loans, an insurance broker who people trust with handling multi-million dollar insurance binders, owners of complex businesses.  These people are not idiots, nor losers, nor mentally deficient.   But "they heard somewhere" that a grandmother or wife of somebody in Kenya said Obama was born there.  Or they heard that the registrar of records in Hawaii was killed in an "accident."   Birtherism is mainstream.

2012: Selling it

Trump 24/7.   Now the story is that Trump's campaign says that Trump has now agreed that Obama is actually an American citizen.   Breaking News: Obama is not a usurper and fraudulent president.  

Rudy Giuliani announces this as a big concession, proof of Trump's good common sense. Trump himself remains coy at this moment.  "Trump isn't ready to talk about it himself," his surrogates say.  Trump himself says "I'm not ready yet."   The news story is: when Trump will say Obama is legitimate.  The media waits with anticipation.  This morning cable news is running a countdown until Trump makes a "major announcement." My i-pad beeped twice last night with a breaking news update: "CNN reports Donald Trump's campaign agrees Obama born in America."   Trump himself, this morning, does not quite say Obama was born in America:  "I want to keep the suspense going."  And it still goes on.  We wait for the big announcement.  

Trump the Hero, the Truth Finder.   Trump's campaign--amplified by Fox and conservative websites--now presents Trump as the person with the strength to find out the truth and end the ugliness of this controversy.   Below is the announcement by the campaign.  It is masterful.  It calls the birtherism charge a "smear", "vicious", "conniving", and that Trump "did a great service to the President and the country".  No mention whatever of Trump having promoted the story.  Trump was not the arsonist, he was the fireman.   He now ignores his own questioning of Obama's legitimacy, and indeed his assertion that he sent investigators to Hawaii who found shocking evidence that the birth certificate was fraudulent.  Trump was not the source of the problem, he was the one who ended this.  

Hillary is the villain.   From 2011 through today birtherism was a Trump signature cause, and for two years it was the primary idea presented by Trump to the media, only being displaced by immigration when Trump announced the start of his campaign in August, 2015.  In 2008, during the Clinton/Obama primary fight some chain emails were re-sent by Hillary supporters (not Hillary and not her campaign) who passed along a rumor going back to a 2004.  Hillary Clinton was asked about this by reporters in 2008 and said she did not agree with the rumored allegation.  He was an American born in Hawaii, she said, and a Christian, not a Muslim.  Trump brought the issue back to the surface in 2011.    The campaign statement repeatedly attributes the "ugly incident" to Hillary.   This morning's story on Fox News had a screen crawl which stated as fact that the issue was raised by Hillary, not Trump. 

July 2015:  Still raising questions, here with Anderson Cooper

Meanwhile, MSNBC says that neither Hillary herself, nor her campaign, ever asserted birtherism but that Trump persists in asserting it was Hillary.   There is plenty of videotape showing birtherism was pushed by Trump, not Hillary.   It may not matter because Trump is putting out a new, more interesting story that they present with clarity and confidence: birtherism is an ugly false rumor that Hillary started and Trump, to his credit, put to rest.

Watch him present that story later today.


Requests for Comments:   If you are a birther (i.e. have serious doubt that Barrack Obama was actually born in the USA) please comment, either by name or anonymously.   A recent poll showed fully 42% of Republicans affirmatively disagree with the statement that Obama is a native born American.   I would like to hear what you are thinking.

Check out the podcast, Two Left Eyes, presenting the thoughts of Peter Sage and Thad Guyer in audio form:  Click Here for the podcast