The rebirth of 鈥渂irtherism鈥�
“We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We’ve got better stuff to do. I’ve got better stuff to do. We’ve got bigger problems to solve.”
President Obama announcing the release of his long-form birth certificate in 2011
Donald Trump boasts that he knows how to “get things done.”
A few years back, he spent a lot of time telling people that he’d sent “investigators” to Hawaii to find proof that Barack Obama wasn’t born there.
That’s one thing he didn’t get done.
On the morning of April 27, 2011, the president strode into the White House briefing room, and he presented clear proof that Donald Trump was full of hot air.
Obama revealed that his long-form birth certificate had been released, then he claimed, “We are not going to be able to solve our problems, if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers.” Within hours he gave the order to take out Osama Bin Laden.
He had “bigger problems to solve,” and he solved them!
Trump, who’d become the carnival-barker-in-chief, refused to admit that he’d failed to discover that the president was a Kenyan plant, hell bent on destroying America.
Instead, he claimed victory, because the president responded to his crusade.
According to Trump, he’d succeeded in flushing out the president’s birth record, when John McCain and Hillary Clinton had failed to do it.
There’s not a shred of evidence that McCain or Clinton had ever questioned Obama’s birthplace.
But Donald Trump even made that claim about Clinton last week, after he’d engaged in a bit of selective deafness, when he was asked a two-part question that included the claim that Obama is a Muslim during one of his rallies.
That set off another controversy in which Trump found himself being sneered at by Democrats, and more intensely, his fellow Republicans.
One of Trump’s fellow Republican presidential candidates, Dr. Ben Carson, found himself in hot water, when he was asked about Trump’s failure to confront a bigot over the false claim that Obama is a Muslim on NBC’s Meet the Press.
CHUCK TODD: “So do you believe that Islam is consistent with the Constitution?”
BEN CARSON: “No. I do not. I do not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this country. I absolutely would not agree with that.”
Unlike Trump, Carson has made verbal gaffes that he fails to smooth over.
If Trump sticks his foot in his mouth, he’ll tell you it’s because his shoes taste much better than anybody else’s.
But Carson has a string of head-scratchers that reveal he’s a novice when it comes to talking about politics. (“People go into prison straight, and they come out gay.” “Obamacare is the worst thing that has happened to this nation since slavery.” And, that the president looks like a “psychopath.”)
So, when his statements about the possibilities of a Muslim becoming president, whipped up a lot of controversy, he appeared at a news conference to “clarify” his statements.
“Anybody of any religious faith whatsoever, if they embrace American values, I have no problem with them. I said that. It’s on the record. On NBC. On Meet the Press,” Carson claimed.
But that’s not what he said.
He was unequivocal in his belief that a Muslim should not be “in charge of this nation.”
Trump, Carson and former Hewlett-Packard CEO, Carly Fiorina stand at the top of the Republican presidential polls.
Fiorina has set off her own controversy.
During the most recent Republican debate, Fiorina gave an impassioned plea for Hillary Clinton and President Obama to take a look at those recently leaked tapes that have supposedly come from Planned Parenthood.
Those films, according to Fiorina, showed “a fully formed fetus on a table, its heart beating, its legs kicking, while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.'”
A number of respected fact-checkers agree – no such video exists.
As President Obama said on April 27, 2011, “We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We’ve got better stuff to do.”
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20 year veteran of television news. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net