Donald Trump’s persistence in propagating false rumors about Barack Obama’s birthplace didn’t go unnoticed. Obama mercilessly roasted Trump during the White House correspondents’ dinner in May 2011. “Tonight, for the first time, I am releasing my official birth video,” Obama announced, playing a clip from “The Lion King” of Simba’s birth. “No one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald,” Obama said. “And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter. Like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”
Trump was not amused, though he was forced to admit Obama was born in the USA. Or, at least, one would think. “An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud,” Trump posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, in April 2012. “Was it a birth certificate? You tell me,” he said in an interview with ABC News in August 2013. “Some people say that was not his birth certificate. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. I’m saying I don’t know. Nobody knows.”
Trump also continued to falsely insist Hillary Clinton started the conspiracy. “[She] first raised this issue to smear then-candidate Barack Obama in her very nasty, failed 2008 campaign for president,” Team Trump claimed in a September 2016 statement (via PolitiFact). “This type of vicious and conniving behavior is straight from the Clinton playbook.”
