Trump talks birthers, White House adviser predicts his failureBy: CNN Associate Producer Gabriella Schwarz
Washington (CNN) - Real estate mogul Donald Trump kept up his birther blasts Sunday, while one White House adviser hoped his stock continues to rise.
Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Trump called the situation surrounding President Obama’s birth certificate “very strange,” lamenting the negative connotation attached to “birthers.”
“The fact is nobody has any information. And his people in the United States don’t even know which hospital. His relatives don’t even know which hospital he was born in,” Trump told CNN Chief Political Correspondent Candy Crowley. “It’s a very strange situation, that’s all I can tell you. And you know, it’s a very sad thing because the people, the birthers, they got labeled and they got labeled so negatively and even the word birther is a negative word.”
In 2008, the Obama campaign released a copy of the certificate, saying the serial number was blacked out for concern over Hawaiian procedure. Since then, many news organizations and the Annenberg Fact Check Project saw the original with the serial number, an embossed seal and a stamped signature.
But that remains insufficient for the “Celebrity Apprentice” star who again said: “Why doesn’t he show is birth certificate,” before insisting he’d rather talk about other issues facing the United States.
“I don’t like to talk about this issue too much, because I really would rather talk about China, I would really rather talk about what OPEC is doing to destroy us, I would really rather talk about other things,” Trump said.
While the potential 2012 presidential contender continues to make the television rounds with his new mantra, White House senior adviser David Plouffe dismissed Trump’s rhetoric, saying it would not impact the overall 2012 race for the White House.
“There may be a small part of the country that believes these things, but mainstream America thinks it’s a sideshow,” Plouffe said on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday. “That’s not leadership, that’s a kind of a sideshow behavior.”
Plouffe also predicted a negative future for Trump in the presidential field.
“I saw Donald Trump kind of rising in the polls. Given his behavior, and the spectacle of the last couple weeks, I hope he keeps on rising,” Plouffe said. “There is zero chance that Donald Trump would ever be hired by the American people to do this job.”
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/10/trump-talks-birthers-white-house-adviser-predicts-his-failure/#more-153746