The Record: 'Birther' backpedal is latest episode in campaign soap opera - NorthJersey.com

WELL, NOW we know: President Obama was born in the United States. Donald Trump said so.

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, speak and states that "President Barack Obama was born in the United States" during a gathering with military leaders and veterans at the new Trump International Hotel in Washington, Friday, Sept. 16, 2016.

In what counts as the latest episode in the soap opera of ridiculousness that the presidential campaign has too often devolved into, the Republican candidate admitted Friday that he was now convinced that Obama was a U.S. citizen, after years of stating otherwise.

“President Obama was born in the United States, period,” Trump said during a news conference. “Now, we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”

Actually, American voters are smarter than Trump thinks. They understand a candidate can’t just erase five years of making ridiculous assertions not based in fact in a few well-timed seconds of sound bite. Trump helped fuel this “birther” movement, has made it part of his campaign, and now he has to own it.

Indeed, an NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll conducted earlier in the summer showed 72 percent of registered Republicans still doubt that Obama is a U.S. citizen, even after he has produced a long form birth certificate, widely available for view online, and even as the president enters the last few months of his term.

American voters, we believe, aren’t going to fall for it. Most Americans want to see Trump and Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton address important topics confronting this country, including national security, economic stability, the nation’s infrastructure, and reasonable, plausible immigration reform.

Trump, who has been trying to soften his image in the past several weeks, has drawn nearly even with Clinton in many recent polls. Still, he can’t seem to help himself from making headlines about matters that border on madness, and serve only to feed the fire of those who doubt Trump has the temperament to be president.

Indeed, Trump’s backpedaling on the so-called “birther” issue, a phenomenon he helped create by calling for Obama’s Hawaiian birth certificate back in 2011, took on shades of the truly bizarre this week as high-ranking members of Trump’s campaign began to acknowledge that Obama was a U.S. citizen.

However, when asked about the “birther” claims during an interview Thursday night with the Washington Post, Trump refused to answer: “I’ll answer that question at the right time,” said Trump. “I just don’t want to answer it yet.”

On Friday, Trump resorted to an old campaign ploy that has served him well. He claimed that it was actually his opponent who first fanned the flames of the “birther” issue. Like so many past statements from Trump, this one is utterly false.

Though a Clinton 2008 campaign staffer, sending an internal memo, suggested the candidate play up Obama’s “lack of American roots,” the Clinton campaign never questioned Obama’s place of birth or his eligibility to be president.

This all might seem like frivolous nonsense if it weren’t so deadly serious.

Trump helped give birth to the “birther” movement, and in the process dealt great injury to the highest office in the land, not to mention issuing a repugnant insult to a sitting president, and the first African-American to occupy the White House.

Now the Republican nominee is trying to walk away from that long record, pretend he had nothing to do with starting this outrageous conspiracy. The candidate’s tortured acknowledgement Friday, an obvious attempt to win moderate-minded voters, is nothing more than theater, and needs to be treated as such. 

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