The New York Times reports that Mike Pence, the Republican nominee for vice president of the United States, told NBC News, “I believe Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.”
So far Donald Trump, who is not known for admitting his mistakes, has refused to talk about the question. One gets the impression from Trump surrogates that if Trump ever did respond, he would say: “Hillary made me.”
This story also made the LA Times and ABC News.
Trump didn’t really want him as a running mate in the first place.
I hope that Clinton takes Trump to task on this at the debates.
Rudy Giuliani and Chris Matthews go at it big time. Rudy insists that Trump disavowed birtherism “two or three years ago” and Matthews wants to know if Rudy is authorized to make headlines by speaking for Trump in this way.
Worth watching.
http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/09/08/chris-matthews-fact-checks-rudy-giulianis-lie-trump-renounced-birtherism-three-years-ago/212949
The Hill’s spin on it:
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/295115-giuliani-says-trump-now-believes-obama-was-born-in-the-us
LOL! I was gonna comment there, but what a cesspool!
ENCORE: WATCH: Chris Matthews crushes Rudy Giuliani for claiming that Trump gave up ‘birtherism’
“The former New York City mayor then claimed — falsely — that Hillary Clinton’s campaign was behind the conspiracy theory painting Obama as being born in Kenya, which would have rendered him ineligible for the presidency.”
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/09/watch-chris-matthews-crushes-rudy-giuliani-for-claiming-that-trump-gave-up-birtherism/
For anyone who wants to understand birtherism and the belief in other conspiracy theories, I recommend the book, “Hillbilly Elegy:” by JD Vance. Very well written, short and to the point and offers among the most sensible and coherent explanation of these phenomena that I have found.
They hate Obama not principally because he is black (some may, but that isn’t the main reason) but because he is everything they want to be and are not-the product of the meritocracy, a good father with a long-term stable marriage, wealthy, brilliant and optimistic. I like the following line he writes-“His wife tells us that we shouldn’t be feeding our children certain foods, and we hate her for it-not because we think she’s wrong but because we know she’s right.”
Obama seems foreign to them, not because they really think he was born in Kenya, but because his life, education, manner of speech and optimistic attitudes are foreign to their world.
Obama seems foreign to them, not because they really think he was born in Kenya, but because his life, education, manner of speech and optimistic attitudes are foreign to their world.
I was “born and raised” (as those born in Appalachia say) in southern West “by God” Virginia. I left to join the Army in 1974, but when I return for visits; I see and hear the same racism as when I left. Even the more educated have never abandoned their deep seated bigotry (they’re just not as open about it). I haven’t read “Hillbilly Elegy” but I’m pretty sure I will recognize many of the people and attitudes he writes about. In the span of 50 years West Virginia went from a solid blue state politically, to solid red; at least on the national stage. As President Johnson predicted the Democrats “have lost the South for a generation.”
It seems to be a strain of the anti-intellectualism which has waxed and waned over the years. They are the voters who support the candidate they would prefer to have a beer with.
Trump was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he is no intellectual. He is crude and vulgar, traits which appeal to the anti-intellectuals. The anti-intellectuals also respond well to simple solutions (see my avatar), so it doesn’t matter to them when Trump promises a massive build-up of the military while simultaneously promising huge tax cuts.
To be fair, the Democrats do poorly in rural areas almost everywhere, except for Vermont, where many of the people, like Bernie, are from New York or elsewhere.
They forgive him for being from New York, because he behaves like the worst kind of New Yorker, whereas Obama behaves like the best kind of Chicagoan.
That was 50 years ago. That’s more than a generation.
So since Mike Pence is on the ticket, I guess that means Trump is weak and folds under pressure.
By the way, Trump spokesman Rudy Guiliani just said that Trump is no longer a doubter of the president’s place of birth.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2016/09/09/giuliani-trump-knows-obama-born-in-u-s.html?via=mobile&source=copyurl
That was 50 years ago. That’s more than a generation.
It’s pretty apparent that it will take several generations for racism to be eradicated, if ever. I believe that is true for the entire country, not just the south.
Another Chris Matthews interview with former Congressman Kingston. IMO the memo he is discussing is the Penn memo from March, 2007.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4ISJaqJt_VM&ebc=ANyPxKrfBvGjbePUXF7ptlxok0F9GGr6guenmWC4ynuTcn_1-TuSA_ovB0O0JyFUmiohYKBVz2RjTSancxPldO2FesbsnTJaPg
Thrifty and JDKINPA, to be fair to Southerners (of which I am one), the passage of Civil Rights legislation led to a more natural political fit for our region. The South had long been the most conservative part of the country, but the people kept electing Democrats because they had a century-long mad-on against the Repiblican party. But for the most part, they (not we, because in those days I was too young to vote) elected people who bore the Democrat label, but voted more like conservative Republicans, especially in the Senate.
Almost without exception, however, if a liberal Democrat survived the primary, he would win the general election because most Southerners bore more antipathy toward Republicans. And before the ’60s, almost all Republican nominees in the South were token candidates, and therefore weak. The few exceptions we’re few Southern House districts that started sending Republicans to Washington about mid-century.
But with the passage of the several Civil Rights acts of the ’50s and ’60s, this all changed. Despite the revisionist history peddled by Ann Coulter, David Barton and the National Review’s Kevin Williamson, Republicans were not due the major credit for the enactment of these historic laws. It’s true that House and Senate Republicans voted for the key Civil Rights bills in greater percentages than Democrats, but that was entirely the result of having only a few Southern Republicans (all of whom voted against the ’64 CR Bill. a few brave Southern Democrats voted for it. Outside the South, only about 10 Democrats voted against the bill, while more than 25 non-Southern Republicans did so.
This was not lost on Southern segregationists, least of all Sen. Storm Thurmond, who changed parties just over 2 months after the landmark law was signed by LBJ. In announcing his switch to his South Carolina constituents, Thurmond listed first in his litany of grievances against his former party that it had become the party of minorities.
Now while it’s true that Republicans voted in greater percentages for the ’64 act, it’s also true that if you sort by ideology, liberals were substantially greater supporters of the legislation than were conservatives.
From 1964 forward, Souhern Democrats were greater supporters of civil rights, by percentage, than were Southern Republicans. And when Southern Republican legislators began to approach parity in numbers with Southern Democrats in the ’70s, the nationwide perventage shifted so that a higher percentage of Democratic lawmakers voted for civil rights than was the case for Republican members of Congress.
I have to mnention Kevin Williamson’s stumble in his “Party of Civil Rights.”
His thesis was as the civil rights revolution advanced in the South, segregationist Democrats began to be replaced by civil rights-supporting Republicans.
Though he is aTexan, Williamson’s sole anecdote was that Rep. John Dowdy, a fire-breathing segregationist Democrat, was replaced in Texas District 7 by the first George Bush, who proceeded to vote for the 1968 Open Housing bill. But the fact is that redistributing had placed Dowdy in a renumbered District 2, and created a new District 7 in the Houston area because of population growth. Dowdy went on to serve in the House alongside Bush. The future president left the House to pursue an unsuccessful Senate bid, while Dowdy left Congress the same year, 1972, under indictment on corruption charges.
What I am saying is that the Civil Rights revolution largely took civil rights off the table as a burning political issue, and erased the negative image of Republicanism in the South (while enlarging the negative image of the Democratic Party)
paving the way for the south to adopt it’s more natural political fit.
And he has been trying to change it to a silver foot.
For those who haven’t read it, the Penn memo can be seen here.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/08/penn-strategy-memo-march-19-2008/37952/
The link erroneously says 3/19/08 but the actual date is 3/19/07.
Of course, Penn never suggests that Obama wasn’t born in Hawaii.
I expect his next venture into consumer products to be flavored shoe polish.
Obama’s approval rating among all voters is now at 58 percent. For someone the birthers say is a terrible leader and ineligible to be president, he seems to doing a pretty good job. For comparison, at this time in George W. Bush’s term his approval rating was in the high 20s.
Just wait, though. President Trump will have 110% approval ratings, just like his friends Putin and Kim Jung Un
Donald Trump used money raised by his foundation for some rather interesting “charitable” purposes. For instance, he spent $20,000 in foundation money on a 6-foot-tall painting of himself.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-donald-trump-retooled-his-charity-to-spend-other-peoples-money/2016/09/10/da8cce64-75df-11e6-8149-b8d05321db62_story.html
“…Mike Pence, the Republican nominee for vice president of the United States, told NBC News, “I believe Barack Obama was born in Hawaii.”
Mike Pence must have seen the certified Verification of Birth for Obama that was issued back in 2012. You know, the document that proves the information on the PDF is legit and birthers are wrong.
Especially when you consider that at least 30% would still disapprove if he developed a cure for all forms of cancer, and set up a foundation to give it to anyone for free.
Well, of course! That would just be government-run health care and liberal handouts that perpetuate a permanent dependency class.
Remember that Republican debate back in 2011, when Wolf Blitzer asked, should we just let an uninsured person die? Members of the audience shouted, yes!
To be fair, Blitzer was talking about a person who had the means to purchase health insurance, but chose not to. Nonetheless, I have no reason to doubt that the attitude of those audience members would be the same if the individual in question were uninsured due to indigence. And then, a lot of these same folks will fume about how eugenists (inspired, naturally, by notorious villain Jacques Cousteau) are conspiring to take over the world. Ay-ay-ay!!
What the f— is going on in this country? We have too many mean-spirited, ignorant people holding positions that should only be occupied by compassionate, intelligent ones. Sure, we’ve always had nut jobs, but now they’re ensconced within some of the highest levels of our government.
I share the frustration expressed by Cenk Uygur at the end of this video about Kentucky’s insane governor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgvSxG_qYdk