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.
Actually, it was a guy whose name you might, as a former Chicagoan, recognize: Anthony Martin-Trigona n/k/a Andy Martin.
Oooock. Trump’s in good company, isn’t he?
“She started it” would be too embarrassing for any other 14-year-old but Trump to say.
Googling New Jersey muslim goes straight to Sid Blumenthal’s tinder profile.
Something I think the Clinton campaign should pound on here involves Trump’s claim that he “ended it.” That is a reference to Obama releasing the long form of his birth certificate back in 2011.
I think the campaign should point out and pound on hard that before Obama did that Trump said he would release his tax returns if Obama did that. Well, Obama did release his long form birth certificate, but where are Trump’s tax returns? I mean the guy is not even making remotely defensible excuses any more. A son has said that people will find things in them to criticize him over and “distract” from his message? Really? That is indeed what a lot of us expect. And if he can withold them because people might pick through them to find things to criticize him on, why could not Hillary make the same argument regarding her emails that she released?
That’s a TERRIFIC point, Barkley. One of the many things about Clinton and her campaign that makes me want to tear my hair out is Clinton’s failure to tell the public WHY IT’S SO IMPORTANT THAT TRUMP IS HIDING HIS TAX RETURNS, IN ADDITION TO THE OBVIOUS–the obvious being that he paid no taxes.
Why the HELL is Clinton not talking about the fact that Trump’s bankruptcies meant that for the last decade-plus, he’s been unable to get normal funding, through the normal financial-services system, for his real estate projects. Who’s been funding them, and to the tune of how much? It’s Putin’s oligarchs, mainly–almost certainly.
Friday’s Trump event introducing the world the opening of his new hotel in Washington would be the perfect hook on which to begin an ad asking whom Trump borrowed the money from and how much he owes to them. And CLINTON HERSELF should go on news-interview show AND MAKE THIS POINT.
Why the HELL wasn’t she talking about stuff like THAT–and about Trump’s comment to Lauer in that infamous interview of him that HE THINKS THE U.S. SHOULD HAVE APPROPRIATED IRAQ’S OIL FIELDS (which of course would never have played into the hands of Islamic terrorists, in the extreme)? Instead, she used that videotaped, media-present fundraiser TWO DAYS LATER to talk about Trump’s basket full of deplorables.
An absolute hallmark of Trump’s comments is that he lacks any capacity at all to recognize even the most obvious implications of his proposed policies. The U.S. should threaten default on it’s debts; the U.S. should have appropriated Iraq’s oil fields, under the premise that to the victor belong the spoils. Etc., etc., etc.
Do we ever hear Clinton making sure the public knows the things Trump has said, AND THEIR IMPLICATIONS–other than just the same-old, same-old, same-old that everyone DOES know.
Kerry ran a really bad campaign in 2004, but still did’t approach the awfulness of Dukakis’s. Clinton’s campaign is topping Kerry’s and heading speedily toward Dukakis’s.
Barkley,
Apparently you don’t understand the art of the deal: you make it and brag about it until it doesn’t seem to be working out for you and then you deny there was a deal/ ignore your side of the deal/ refuse to talk abut it anymore. Being a deal maker is a little like being a magician; now you see it, now you don’t.
Beautiful, Jack. If only Clinton would make this point. Instead, she just generically lists things like Trump’s bankruptcies, fraud, failure to pay his contractors–without actually stating the specifics of what she’s talking about–and then drops the subject in favor reminding people that he’s racist and xenophobic and that he’s a danger foreign-policy-wise as evidenced by all those national-security-establishment folks who are endorsing her.
Worse campaign than Kerry’s–which is saying a lot. Nearing Dukakis-level awfulness.
Any Trumpism will do to assault those “not on board the Clinton neocon train”.
It boils down to voting for the deplorable enabler or voting for the neocons.
The lesser of evils!
The selection is in the mind of the beholder.
In my entire life I have never seen anything like these hard core Sanders supporters.
Even when they state they will hold their nose and vote for Clinton, they are spreading negativity at an incredible rate. Amazingly, they stop to the level of Trump with outright lies.
“One of the many things about Clinton and her campaign that makes me want to tear my hair out is Clinton’s failure to tell the public WHY IT’S SO IMPORTANT THAT TRUMP IS HIDING HIS TAX RETURNS, IN ADDITION TO THE OBVIOUS: THAT HE PAID NO TAXES. ”
Google Clinton campaign and Trump tax returns.
I meant that the obvious is that he paid no taxes, not that that this is something Clinton needs to point out. I just changed my comment to make that clear.
Actually, my intended point was that there are far more important reasons why Trump is hiding his tax returns: how much money he owes, whom he owes it to, and generally who is actually supplying him the money to, say, buy the choice property in D.C. and renovate it into a five-star hotel.
But every bit as important is that there is a huge difference between the Clinton campaign saying something or posting something on its website and Clinton herself going a TV interview show, or saying at a campaign appearance and putting it on YouTube, and saying these things. She herself should say these things and then run the video again and again. That, not having some campaign person say something, or issuing a a campaign statement, is the only way that Clinton can gain attention for what she says about Trump.
I explained this in depth in my response to Barkley’s comment, which I posted just before I posted my initial one to you. I made it very clear there.
I was a Sanders voter but I’m not holding my nose and voting Clinton. After watching Trump destroy the republican party I realized that Sanders should have been able to destroy the democratic party the same way. The fact that he failed only proves that of the two the democrats were the more corrupt party . The only way to destroy the democratic party now is to vote Trump .
Discovering the party you associated yourself with most of your life is a disgusting cesspool of greed and corruption and then voting for that party is baffling to me. It can’t be fixed from within its too far gone it has to be burnt down and the earth salted .
bronco:
Do us all a favor and stay home and watch TV. Your reasoning is flawed and you fall into the same category as the trumpeteers.
Bev,
Once again google Clinton Trump tax returns.
the campaign is doing everything you think they should be doing, from airplane press conferences to commercials to speeches.