Donald Trump’s campaign said in a statement late Thursday that the GOP presidential nominee does believe President Obama was born in the U.S. as it tries to quash repercussions of Trump’s “birther” attacks on Obama.
{mosads}”In 2011, Mr. Trump was finally able to bring this ugly incident to its conclusion by successfully compelling President Obama to release his birth certificate,” spokesman Jason Miller said. “Mr. Trump did a great service to the President and the country by bringing closure to the issue that Hillary Clinton and her team first raised.
“Inarguably, Donald J. Trump is a closer. Having successfully obtained President Obama’s birth certificate when others could not, Mr. Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States.”
The campaign accused Clinton of starting the birtherism campaign during the 2008 Democratic primary as a sign of her “vicious and conniving behavior”; Politifact has ruled that claim false. But unlike Trump, Miller said, “Hillary Clinton was too weak to get an answer.”
In an interview with the Washington Post published Thursday, Donald Trump refused to say whether he believes President Obama was born in the U.S.
“I’ll answer that question at the right time,” he said. “I just don’t want to answer it yet.”
With the Thursday statement, Miller becomes the latest Trump campaign insider to claim that their candidate now believes that Obama was born in the U.S. Last week, VP pick Mike Pence, campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and Rudy Giuliani all said that Trump had renounced his birther views.
Trump has long promoted the theory that Obama is secretly an immigrant. In 2011, the president released his long-form birth certificate, which showed that he was born in Hawaii.
Despite his spokesman saying in the statement that Trump brought the issue to a conclusion when Obama released the document, Trump has promoted the “birther” theory as recently as August 2013. During an interview with ABC News at the time, Trump questioned the authenticity of Obama’s birth records.
“Well I don’t know,” he said when asked if he was convinced by the certificate. “Was it a birth certificate? You tell me. 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.”
Brian Fallon, a spokesman for the Clinton campaign, blasted Trump, saying that he needs to make the admission himself and not through a surrogate.
“Trump needs to say it himself,” Fallon tweeted after the statement was released. “On camera. And admit he was wrong for trying to delegitimize the country’s first African American President.”