Trump’s disgusting, dangerous dance with birthers
The Washington Post's Post Partisan ^ | April 7, 2011 | Jonathan Capehart
Donald Trump (Birther-N.Y.) is at it again. In double-barrelled interviews on NBC’s “Today Show” and MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Trump continued his disgusting and dangerous dabbling in the disproved conspiracy theory that President Obama was not born in the United States. This might be good for the ratings of his television show. This might even be good for his business. But it is terrible for the nation and public discourse that someone who claims to be so smart is so willing to perpetuate a lie.
(VIDEO AT LINK)
Alex Koppelman snipped this strand of the conspiracy in Dec. 2008 and again in July 2009. And he’ll most likely have to do it again now that Trump has embraced the fallacy with both hands. This all stemmed from a interview of Sarah Obama, the second wife of the president’s grandfather, by Ron McRae, a street preacher, through a translator over the phone. As Koppelman reported in 2009, “Sarah Obama is not the president’s biological grandmother, but he calls her ‘Granny Sarah.’”
In a clear lost-in-translation moment (and over an international phone line), which you can listen to in full here, Mrs. Obama said she was there for her grandson’s birth. When McRae asks where in Mombassa the president was born, the translator, Vitalis Akech Ogombe, repeatedly corrected him....
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