Donald Trump blew away Fox’s attempt to label his birther questioner a fake when he said, “a lot of the people in the audience were nodding” as he accused President Obama of being a foreign-born Muslim. Then Trump tried to weasel out of responsibility for his birtherism by blaming Hillary Clinton.
As I posted yesterday, Fox News tried to whitewash the birtherism among Republicans by repeatedly suggesting that the now-infamous questioner at a Trump campaign event, whose birtherism has tarnished Trump’s brand, was a plant.
On Fox & Friends today, cohost Steve Doocy asked Trump if he knew who the questioner was and whether he could have been a plant. Trump’s answer was probably just what Fox News Republibots did not want to hear:
TRUMP: No, I don’t (know anything about him). He had a Trump, a beautiful shirt on which shows that he’s a fan. And you know, when he was asking that question, by the way, a lot of the people in the audience were nodding. They were not laughing at him or anything. They were nodding. But I don’t think he was a plant, you know, I mean certainly not from our standpoint. That would not be, that would not be the question – in fact, when that question was asked, I thought, oh, boy, that could only happen to me, alright? I knew that question was going to be a slightly controversial one. But no, I think he was a hard-working guy from the area and he had this on his mind.
But rather than stand up for his own birtherism or admit that it has been completely discredited (which the three cohosts thoughtfully refrained from mentioning), Mr. I'm So Amazing blamed Hillary Clinton – with another untruth:
TRUMP: Take a look at what Hillary said in 2008 when she was running against him… about his, where he came from and his whole status. You know, Hillary was one of the first, maybe the first to bring it up and I think you should, people should start, they should go back and they should look at Hillary’s relationship to Obama when they were running against each other.
This is a falsehood that has been debunked. From FactCheck.Org:
Claims about Obama’s birthplace appeared in chain emails bouncing around the Web, and one of the first lawsuits over Obama’s birth certificate was filed by Philip Berg, a former deputy Pennsylvania attorney general and a self-described “moderate to liberal” who supported Clinton.
But none of those stories suggests any link between the Clinton campaign, let alone Clinton herself, and the advocacy of theories questioning Obama’s birth in Hawaii.
But rather than correct the record (again), Doocy helped validate the falsehood. “Her campaign helped create the idea that Barack Obama was a Muslim and was born in Kenya,” Doocy said. “Now she’s upset that you said what you said last week.”
But even if Hillary Clinton had started the lie, that's no excuse for Trump to keep promoting it. He has previously announced that he sent private investigators to Hawaii to investigate President Obama’s birth. But he won't say what he found.
But, of course, nobody asked him about that here.
Watch the deceit above, from the September 21 Fox & Friends.
Crossposted at NewsHounds.us
