Kay on birthers

In an interview with Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, journalist Jonathan Kay, author of Among the Truthers: A Journey through America’s Growing Conspiracist Underground, talks about the the birther movement.

Speaking of Donald Trump, Kay says:

And I actually believe that I don’t think he’s dumb enough to believe these birther conspiracies. I think he was just a clever marketer and figured this would be just a good way to market himself as a presidential candidate.

Kay further speculates why he thinks conspiracy theories have such a prominent place in America.

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31 Responses to Kay on birthers

  1. sponson says:

    Mr. Trump was never interested in high office before, then suddenly got a huge push and tons of publicity during a candidacy that was almost entirely oriented around the single issue of birtherism. The President then causes Hawaii to release his original birth certificate document from 1961, and Trump’s candidacy collapses. The existing GOP Presidential candidates then suddenly found they no longer had to court the “birther vote” to be considered viable “Tea Party” heroes. I don’t think this was an accident, and said so before the President surprised everyone with the document.

  2. keith says:

    sponson:
    Mr. Trump was never interested in high office before, then suddenly got a huge push and tons of publicity during a candidacy that was almost entirely oriented around the single issue of birtherism.The President then causes Hawaii to release his original birth certificate document from 1961, and Trump’s candidacy collapses.The existing GOP Presidential candidates then suddenly found they no longer had to court the “birther vote” to be considered viable “Tea Party” heroes.I don’t think this was an accident, and said so before the President surprised everyone with the document.

    Actually he has ‘threatened’ to run for President several times, each time to generate publicity for some project or the other, never in seriousness.

    His latest trip was solely for the purpose of gaining publicity for his ratings challenged TV show in its final weeks leading up the finale.

  3. Obsolete says:

    I disagree. I think Trump stated to believe the lies fed to him, and now simmers in rage after having been played for a fool.
    I would love for an interviewer to ask him what he thinks of Corsi and Farah now…

  4. Bob says:

    Coincidently, Trump’s interest in the president’s birth certificate peaked around the same time of his television show’s season finale.

  5. Black Lion says:

    Obsolete: I disagree. I think Trump stated to believe the lies fed to him, and now simmers in rage after having been played for a fool.I would love for an interviewer to ask him what he thinks of Corsi and Farah now…

    Speaking of Corsi and Farah, here is Aaron Klein still keeping birtherism alive…

    Aaron Klein, Birther
    Topic: WorldNetDaily

    Apparently, a condition of employment at WorldNetDaily is that you must be a birther. WND’s Aaron Klein has used his WABC radio show in the past few weeks to peddle some key birther claims about the supposed inauthencity of President Obama’s birth certificate.

    On the Sept. 4 edition of his radio show, Klein told guest, fellow WND employee and fellow birther Jerome Corsi that “I personally hired independent forensics experts, as did WorldNetDaily — but I did myself. They didn’t know who I was, they didn’t know each other, and they independently verified that there were modifications made, that they found modifications on the birth certificate PDF document that was released. They can’t say what the modifications were, but that already raises questions.” Klein offers no further elaboration on who these so-called “experts” are.

    That would be surprising, because Corsi has already admitted that no real forensic document examiners will venture an opinion on the authenticity of the PDF file, and that none of the so-called “experts” he has cited are not “traditionally trained court-authorized forensic document examiners.” That raises questions about the so-called “experts” Klein retained. Further, WND has already pointed out that the “modifications” that were made were done to enhance the legibility of the document — hardly the conspiracy he suggests it is.

    Klein complained that anyone who peddles birther conspiracies “are disparaged, they are smeared by the media” — then inadvertently demonstrated why that is by letting Corsi spin his conspiracy that Donald Trump is secretly working with Obama to exploit the issue to achieve Obama’s re-election.

    Klein expanded on his birtherism on his Sept. 18 radio show while ranting about the Obama campaign’s new AttackWatch.com site, bizarrely blaming Obama for the birther rebuttal on the site: “Obama making the birth certificate and issues of eligibility into a story again. Not me, not anybody else, it is Obama.” Um, wasn’t Klein jusdt talking about it two weeks earlier? Yes, he was. Talk about projection.

    He insisted that he believes Obama was born in the United States, but he repeated his assertion that he hired (anonymous) experts who found supposed anomaies in the PDF file. Responding to the site’s assertion that FactCheck.org verified the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate, Klein claimed that this was “misleading information” because “FactCheck.org is not a nonpartisan organization. It is funded by the Annenberg Challenge — yes, the same Annenberg Challenge that funded the Chicago Annenberg Challenge that gave President Obama his first job. And who was the chairman of the board? Why, it was none other than Bill Ayers. So don’t tell me on this website that FactCheck.org is a nonpartisan organization.”

    We’ve previously noted that Walter Annenberg, whose Annenberg Foundation was the source of the funding behind FactCheck.org and the Annenberg Challenge, was a prominent Republican. And FactCheck.org points out that the Chicago Annenberg Challenge “finished its work long before we came into being in late 2003,” the two projects are among 5,200 grants funded by the Annenberg Foundation, and the current foundation chairman donated to John McCain’s campaign in 2008.

    Klein is also blatantly lying when he says that the Chicago Annenberg Challenge position was Obama’s “first job.” That would be in a Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlor as a teenager in Hawaii.

    http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/blog/

  6. But we do know who the three experts he contacted were from an earlier broadcast. One of them was Ivan Zatkovich who has been discussed here. What the other two said has not been disclosed. However, in that earlier WABC broadcast after discussing what his experts told him, Klein summed up:

    And actually, the bottom line is that now Obama has done his part to show that he was born in Hawaii. The onus is no longer on Obama to show that. The onus is on somebody else. If somebody else can produce conclusive evidence that Obama was born somewhere else, so that this birth certificate is not real, that’s a different story, but that hasn’t happened, so we have to accept that Obama was born, and this is the evidence as of now, in Hawaii.

    Looks like Klein is a shifty fellow.

    Black Lion: Klein offers no further elaboration on who these so-called “experts” are.

  7. Horus says:

    I believe the only reason Trump got involved at all was to promote The Apprentice.
    He knew the birther controversy would get him on every news channel.

  8. Rickey says:

    I haven’t seen any birther chatter about the upcoming SCOTUS conference on Keyes v. Bowen, scheduled for 9/26/11. Do you suppose the birthers have finally figured out how these conferences work? I’m not even seeing anything about it on World Nut Daily.

  9. Dr. Kenneth Noisewater (Bob Ross) says:

    Dr. Conspiracy: Looks like Klein is a shifty fellow.

    Get rid of the F and add another t

  10. Judge Mental says:

    “And I actually believe that I don’t think he’s dumb enough to believe these birther conspiracies.”

    Very clumsy wording for a “journalist”.

  11. jayHG says:

    Obsolete: I disagree. I think Trump stated to believe the lies fed to him, and now simmers in rage after having been played for a fool.I would love for an interviewer to ask him what he thinks of Corsi and Farah now…

    I agree 100%. Birfers were calling/e-mailing/fed x-ing him telling him he was “Trump,The Savior Cause All Others Were Gotten To And You Alone Are The Bravest Of All Time” and he fell for it. Trump loves nothing if not being told that he’s the greatest. Now he’s pissed/angry cause frankly, I thought he was smarter than that. I thought he’d at least do a smidgen of research (Google would have done fine), but he was spouting the most obvious falsehoods of birtherstan. So yes, now he feels foolish and embarassed.

    If you get that interview, may I please be a fly on the wall?

  12. Critical Thinker says:

    jayHG…but he was spouting the most obvious falsehoods of birtherstan.So yes, now he feels foolish and embarassed.

    I totally agree. And any notion that birfers have that Trump was a White House plant sent to infiltrate and destroy the birfer movement is absolutely ridiculous. Trump was soundly and publicly humiliated with the release of the LFBC, the White House correspondents dinner, and then the killing of bin Laden. There is no way a narcissist like Trump would set himself up for such a spectacular fall. I don’t think he will ever be able to make a full comeback unless he addresses the “you won’t believe what my investigators are finding” BS. What did they find, Donny??

  13. Horus says:

    jayHG: Now he’s pissed/angry cause frankly, I thought he was smarter than that. I thought he’d at least do a smidgen of research (Google would have done fine), but he was spouting the most obvious falsehoods of birtherstan. So yes, now he feels foolish and embarassed.

    I don’t think Trump believed a word of his own BS.
    He knew that it was the most controversial platform to run on and would get him the most free exposure he could get, to promote The season finale of The Apprentice.

  14. Sef says:

    Horus: I don’t think Trump believed a word of his own BS.
    He knew that it was the most controversial platform to run on and would get him the most free exposure he could get, to promote The season finale of The Apprentice.

    I am not sure whether Trump believed all his lines himself, but he certainly expected not to be questioned about anything he said. In that TV interview where he was asked about his Hawaiian researches he refuses to give an answer and is really affronted to be asked about it. After all, he is The Donald.

  15. Lord Basil says:

    I never believed Trump was an authentic conservative from the beginning. IMHO, he was attempting to use the patriots who have tirelessly pressed the issue of Obama’s ineligibility to promote himself and his TV show.

    He also donated to numerous Democrat Party causes and politicians.

  16. Majority Will says:

    Lord Basil: . . . he was attempting to use the idiots . . .

    FIFY

  17. Scientist says:

    Lord Basil: I never believed Trump was an authentic conservative from the beginning. IMHO, he was attempting to use the patriots who have tirelessly pressed the issue of Obama’s ineligibility to promote himself and his TV show

    IMHO there has been no one on the political scene that would fit the bill of an “authentic conservative” in a long time. What you have are a grab-bag of foaming at the mouth religious fools, utterly clueless libertarians and proto-fascist corporate neo-Cons (check out Mussolini’s ideas on the corporate state if you are in doubt).. As for “patriots” meaning those who put the interests of the country ahead of their sect,you must be joking. The only Patriots i see are Tom Brady and the boys on Sunday.

  18. Rickey says:

    Lord Basil:
    I never believed Trump was an authentic conservative from the beginning.IMHO, he was attempting to use the patriots who have tirelessly pressed the issue of Obama’s ineligibility to promote himself and his TV show.

    You mean the “patriots” who have been calling for a military coup and want to nullify the last presidential election?

  19. Lord Basil says:

    Rickey: You mean the “patriots” who have been calling for a military coup and want to nullify the last presidential election?

    Anyone who had the courage to go forward with something like that is a patriot in my book.

    If Barack Hussein Obama had any class at all, he would resign right now, or at least finish out his term and ask Hillary to run (which I think she’s plotting to do right now).

    Scientist: proto-fascist corporate neo-Cons (check out Mussolini’s ideas on the corporate state if you are in doubt)

    The only fascists I see at the Marxists in the White House and the Democrat Party right now.

    Fascism and Marxism are practically kissing cousins.

  20. Sef says:

    Lord Basil: Fascism and Marxism are practically kissing cousins.

    Thank you for enlightening us on that marvelous “fact”. It’s always good to have your intelligence and knowledge displayed on these pages.

  21. Majority Will says:

    Lord Basil: Anyone who had the courage to go forward with something like that is a patriot in my book.

    Is it a pop-up book with all the pictures neatly colored with crayons?

    “The only fascists I see at the Marxists in the White House and the Democrat Party right now.”

    I don’t think you know the difference between Groucho and Karl.

  22. Scientist says:

    Lord Basil: Fascism and Marxism are practically kissing cousins

    Read Mussolini on Fascism and the corporate state. Any honest person would have to admit it is very close to today’s Teapublican Party (which bears ZERO resemblance to true Conservatism, as described by Edmund Burke and other actual conservative thinkers). Therefore, the Teapublicans are without a doubt Fascist. By your own admission that makes them Marxist. Since you identify wiith them, I must conclude that you are a Marxist. There aren’t too many left these days, so it’s good to meet one.

  23. Obsolete says:

    Lord Basil must also be a foreigner, since Americans don’t have titles of nobility.
    So in addition to being a Tea Party Fascist/Marxist, he is also a Monarchist interfering with America.

    It must be very busy in that mind of his. I wonder if there is any room left for rational thoughts to occupy.

  24. Northland10 says:

    Lord Basil: stuff….

    This one is not worthy of pesto.

  25. Rickey says:

    Lord Basil: Anyone who had the courage to go forward with something like that is a patriot in my book.

    You claim to be a Vietnam vet. Do you have the “courage” to lead the coup?

    I didn’t think so. Obama has been President for 32 months and we’re still waiting for you “patriots” to frog march him out of the White House.

  26. Interesting. Today I’ve been thinking what to do with this wonderful crop of basil I have. I’m trying to decide whether to dry it or freeze it.

    Northland10: Lord Basil: stuff….

    This one is not worthy of pesto.

  27. Sef says:

    Northland10: This one is not worthy of pesto.

    Too`many (pine) nuts.

  28. G says:

    *yawn* Your statements are so predictably full of every stereotypical RW extremist claptrap, that I can’t take you seriously at all. You are just a parody troll and with that lame HRC comment, obviously a Concern Troll to boot. Yeah, Dick Cheney just tried the same type of lame Concern Trolling… good luck with that or getting anyone to believe you. There is nothing sincere or real about you. You post ludicrious stuff merely for the sake of getting a rise. Find another hobby, obvious troll.

    Lord Basil: Anyone who had the courage to go forward with something like that is a patriot in my book.
    If Barack Hussein Obama had any class at all, he would resign right now, or at least finish out his term and ask Hillary to run (which I think she’s plotting to do right now).

  29. AnotherBird says:

    Lord Basil:

    If Barack Hussein Obama had any class at all, he would resign right now, or at least finish out his term and ask Hillary to run (which I think she’s plotting to do right now).

    There is no logical or rational reason for Obama to resign.

  30. The Magic M says:

    Lord Basil: or at least finish out his term and ask Hillary to run (which I think she’s plotting to do right now)

    So that makes you a PUMA wingnut, doesn’t it?

  31. sfjeff says:

    Obama has more integrity than Palin, and will serve out the full term that voters elected him to.

    And HIlary won’t want to be the Democratic candidate this election. Everything that is blamed upon Obama will be blamed on her also- and she will be blamed by Obama supporters too.

    Lord Basil: Anyone who had the courage to go forward with something like that is a patriot in my book.If Barack Hussein Obama had any class at all, he would resign right now, or at least finish out his term and ask Hillary to run (which I think she’s plotting to do right now).The only fascists I see at the Marxists in the White House and the Democrat Party right now.Fascism and Marxism are practically kissing cousins.

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