Seeking to put an end to the ‘birther’ controversy, Donald Trump’s campaign has said he believes that President Barack Obama was born in the United States, despite the Republican presidential candidate’s repeated refusal to admit it himself.
‘Having successfully obtained President Obama’s birth certificate when others could not, Mr Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States,’ said Jason Miller, senior communication advisor to the Trump Campaign.
Trump had been a leader of the ‘birther’ movement that questioned Hawaii-born Obama’s citizenship.
Miller, however, alleged that the Hillary Clinton’s campaign first raised this issue to smear the then candidate Barack Obama in her very nasty, failed 2008 campaign for President.
‘This type of vicious and conniving behavior is straight from the Clinton Playbook. As usual, however, Hillary Clinton was too weak to get an answer. Even the MSNBC show Morning Joe admits that it was Clinton’s henchmen who first raised this issue, not Donald J Trump,’ he alleged.
‘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. 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,’ Miller said.
‘Inarguably, Donald J Trump is a closer,’ Miller said adding that Trump now believes that Obama was born in US.
Miller’s statement came after Trump in an interview said he was unwilling to say that the outgoing President Obama was born in the US.
‘I’ll answer that question at the right time. I just don’t want to answer it yet,’ Trump told Washington Post in an interview on Wednesday.
‘I don’t talk about it anymore. The reason I don’t is because then everyone is going to be talking about it as opposed to jobs, the military, the vets, security,’ Trump argued as reported by The Washington Post.
According to the daily, when told that he has been warmer to Putin than many other Republicans, Trump said: ‘No. No. I simply said that Putin is a stronger leader than Obama’.
IMAGE: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks to the Economic Club of New York luncheon in Manhattan, New York, on Thursday. Photograph: Mike Segar/Reuters