Trump is wrong. Hillary Clinton didn’t start the birther claim. New Jersey Muslims standing on rooftops did.

Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it. I finished it, you know what I mean. President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.

— Donald Trump, today

I took that quote from Paul Waldman’s post at the Washington Post’s Plum Line blog titled “Donald Trump just summed up his entire despicable campaign in 30 seconds.”  Waldman then says, “Neither Hillary Clinton nor her campaign ever questioned Obama’s birthplace in 2008, as Trump claims. Every fact-checker has verified that. Trump is lying.

Lying?  Nah.  I think, instead, that Trump just has Clinton and her earlier presidential campaign confused with one of the groups of New Jersey Muslims on rooftops, and the year 2008 with 2001.  I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that the Obama-birther claim originated back in 2001 in New Jersey by people standing on rooftops and cheering as the Towers fell.

Memory can play funny games, though, so I could be wrong.  So could Trump, but we’ll know more once he finds a videotape of Clinton and her campaign saying Obama was born in Kenya.  Or alternatively, of New Jersey Muslims on rooftops cheering as the Towers fell.  Either one would suffice.