Birth Certificate Issue Undermining Obama Ability to Do Job: White House Officials Before Release
Wednesday, April 27, 2011 | Kristinn
Last night, before the Obama administration released the president's long-form birth certificate, CNN's Ed Henry reported two of Obama's most senior White House advisers told him that the doubts about Obama's eligibility were affecting his ability to do his job.
Henry reported this on Anderson Cooper 360:
COOPER: Joining me now, White House correspondent Ed Henry, who asked a question to the spokesman today about that at the briefing. Also on the phone, political contributor Cornell Belcher, who did polling for the 2008 Obama campaign and will be working for the 2012 campaign Obama campaign as well.
Ed, you got even more reaction from the White House behind the scenes today. I know you have been talking to administration officials privately. Did they think there's any possible political benefit to this, any downside for some of the President's critics?
ED HENRY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, senior advisers, I spoke to two of the President's most senior advisers today about this. And they insisted with real deep conviction that they think that they're not thinking about the politics, that this is bad for the country, in their words, because they say look, this is settled law to us, basically. They say the President put out the certificate of live birth, as you have been noting, and people like Donald Trump just won't listen.
And they say, in a situation like that, that is just bad for the country because people just want to make the President illegitimate at all costs just because they're critics and it makes it harder for the President to actually cut deals with Republicans, do his day job because it just persists.
COOPER: Well, Ed, let me -- let me argue Donald Trump's point here because he's not here to argue for it himself. Why not, if they want this to go away and they don't like the conversation, why not release the original birth certificate form, the so-called long form, which is actually called a certificate of live birth, rather than the certification of live birth, which they have released?
HENRY: I asked Jay Carney that very question as a follow-up. And he basically said, look, the critics like Donald Trump are just going to move the goalposts. Even if you put out the actual birth certificate, they would raise questions about the signature. They would raise questions about, well, was this doctored? As you heard Donald Trump, every time you presented him with a fact, Anderson, he came up with, well, he was born on a Friday, but it came out on a Sunday, this, that. The goalposts keep moving.
That's the way Jay Carney basically feels. That's what they feel at the White House, that no matter what they do, the conspiracy theorists are going to persist. So they believe the President dealt with this and it's over.
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