Horowitz: Birther-in-Chief Gracelessly Surrenders

Horowitz: Birther-in-Chief Gracelessly Surrenders

This past Friday, more than 5 years after President Obama released his long form birth certificate, the Birther-in-Chief Donald Trump finally uttered  the words that were self-evident the day Trump began his birther crusade:  “President Obama was born in the United States”   He did so only because his top campaign advisors privately told him it was a political imperative and publicly forced his hand by proclaiming on television that Trump was now convinced that the President was born in this country. But the grudging and graceless way the Reality Star and Businessman did it with no explanation and no apology is likely to limit and possibly erase the political benefit of this belated admission.

Instead of a demonstration of contrition, which if he could have pulled off with any sincerity,  would have helped him with white college educated voters and might have given him a more receptive audience in the African=American community, where the only place he can go is up, he shamelessly attempted to take credit for ending the birther controversy, presumably referring to the fact that he was largely responsible for Obama releasing the long-form birth certificate, and falsely blamed the origin of the controversy on Hillary Clinton. Trump declared, “Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it. I finished it, you know what I mean.”

It was a surreal event in which Trump spent far more time promoting his new Washington, DC hotel, the site of the event, and bringing up military veterans to sing his praises, than he did on his abandonment of birtherism.  Further, his attempt to frame the birther issue as a distraction caused by someone else doesn't  even pass the laugh test.  Donald Trump is the person who deserves the most credit for keeping the birther issue alive.  After all,  his claim that he ended the birther issue is obviously false, since he continued to sow doubts about the President’s birth for years after the long-form birth certificate was released, using the same racially tinged arguments.

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Given that Donald Trump not only questioned whether President Obama was born in this country, but also repeatedly hinted that the President is secretly sympathetic to terrorists, claimed the only reason he got into Harvard Law School was affirmative action and asserted that he is really a Muslim,  if he truly expected to  put his birther past in the rear view mirror, he needed to provide some explanation of his actions and an expression of regret for the damage he did in questioning the legitimacy of our first African-American President.

From the moment Donald Trump began to cynically raise doubts about whether the President was born in this country, he knew it wasn’t true.  Trump claimed to have sent private investigators to Hawaii who were finding out ‘unbelievable things.”  There is no record of his supposed investigators making any inquiries nor has Trump ever released any of these shocking findings---because they don’t exist.

To advance his own political career, Donald Trump spent more than 5 years working to undermine the legitimacy of the first African-American President and doing so in a nakedly racist way.   At the end of the day, however,  he only really succeeded in putting his own credibility in question.  If he loses the election, which still remains probable, it  will only be justice that his championship of birtherism will be a  major contributing factor.

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island