Hillary: ‘Ludicrous’ to say I was behind birther claims

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Wednesday responded to claims that she or her aides were behind questions starting in the 2008 election over Barack Obama’s birthplace.

“Did you or your campaign start the whole birther thing and did you have any confrontation with the president?” CNN host Don Lemon asked Clinton on the “Tom Joyner Morning Show.”

{mosads}“No, that is so ludicrous, Don,” the former secretary of State responded. 

“You know, honestly, I just believe that — first of all, it’s totally untrue. And secondly, you know, the president and I have never had any kind of confrontation like that,” Clinton said. 

Clinton was asked the questions after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Tuesday night accused her of starting the birther movement. He made the accusation on Twitter.

Just remember, the birther movement was started by Hillary Clinton in 2008. She was all in!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 23, 2015

“This is such a bad example of what’s wrong with instantaneous reactions and Americans getting all worked up and people feeding prejudice and paranoia like Donald Trump,” Clinton said Wednesday.

“Obviously all of us have to stand against it,” Clinton added on Joyner’s show. “I have been blamed for nearly everything — that was a new one to me.””

The White House released a copy of Obama’s long-form birth certificate from Hawaii in 2011 after Trump and others suggested he was not born in the United States.

The issue reappeared last week after Trump failed to correct a pair of supporters who said at a campaign event that Obama is “not even an American” and “is a Muslim born abroad.”

Trump also refused to say that Obama is American during an appearance Tuesday night on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

Clinton late last week slammed Trump for failing to shut down the claims, saying, “It was untrue and [Trump] should have from the beginning repudiated that kind of rhetoric.”