{After years of casting doubt on President Barack Obama’s place of birth, Trump changes his mind – though no apology yet.}<\/p>\n
The Republican Party’s presidential candidate Donald Trump has finally acknowledged that US President Barack Obama was born in the United States, and his admission quickly drew criticism for perpetuating a racist conspiracy.<\/p>\n
“President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period,” said Trump on Friday, reversing his long-held position casting doubt on the veracity of Obama’s birthplace, which was known as the “birther” controversy.<\/p>\n
Trump had for years promoted the birther movement against Obama, who was born in Hawaii to an American mother and a Kenyan father, questioning his birthplace and, by association, the legality of his presidency.<\/p>\n
In 2012, the New York businessman turned presidential candidate wrote on Twitter that Obama’s birth certificate was “a fraud”. <\/p>\n
Without offering evidence, Trump on Friday also accused his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton of starting the birther allegations during her 2008 presidential primary campaign.<\/p>\n
“She is the one that started it, and she was unable or incapable of finishing it. That’s the way it worked out,” Trump said.<\/p>\n
Clinton was quick to respond, saying that Trump’s news conference about Obama’s birthplace was a “disgrace”, and her Republican rival had expressed “zero regret” for years of “pushing a racist conspiracy theory”.<\/p>\n
Clinton said in a series of tweets that when Trump tries to “deflect blame” for denying that Obama was born in the US, her Republican opponent was “lying”.<\/p>\n
“He had the audacity to spout a new lie about the birther movement that he helped to build,” the Democratic National Committee said.<\/p>\n
Bernie Sanders, who was Hillary Clinton’s rival in the Democratic presidential nomination race, said in a tweet: “The birther movement was about delegitimising the first African-American president in our history.”<\/p>\n
The head of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), Democratic Representative G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina, called Trump a “disgusting fraud”. Other members of the CBC told reporters that Trump has tried to delegitimise Obama, the first African-American president.<\/p>\n
Civil rights activist Jesse James pointed out that Trump now owes Obama an apology.<\/p>\n
Members of the CBC also held a news conference later on Friday to urge African-American voters to “resist any temptation to support Trump”.<\/p>\n
Celebrities also voiced their criticism of Trump’s latest stunt. Actress Mia Farrow said: “Listen now to the Members of Congressional Black Caucus and understand the pain Trump is inflicting on our fellow Americans.”<\/p>\n
Obama declined to comment on Trump, telling reporters he had better things to do.<\/p>\n
“I’m shocked that a question like that would come up at a time when we’ve got so many other things to do – well, I’m not that shocked actually,” Obama said.<\/p>\n
In 2011, Obama, released a long-form version of his birth certificate showing he was born in Hawaii.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{After years of casting doubt on President Barack Obama’s place of birth, Trump changes his mind – though no apology yet.} The Republican Party’s presidential candidate Donald Trump has finally acknowledged that US President Barack Obama was born in the United States, and his admission quickly drew criticism for perpetuating a racist conspiracy. “President Barack […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-28690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28690"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=28690"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=28690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}