Take Two: Donald Trump Releases Official Birth Certificate
March 29, 2011 1:11 PM
News Michael Falcone reports:
Donald Trump learned the hard way this week that if you're going to call on the president to release his official birth certificate, you'd better do the same.
Trump, who has been putting pressure on Obama lately to make public his long-form birth certificate from Hawaii, decided to set a good example and release his own on Monday. Only problem was, the document that Trump provided to the conservative Website Newsmax wasn't his actual birth certificate, but rather a "hospital certificate of birth."
On Tuesday, Trump, who is contemplating a presidential run in 2012, sought to correct the oversight, providing a copy of his official birth certificate issued by the New York City Department of Health to ABC News.
See a larger version HERE.
It shows that "Donald John Trump" was born June 14, 1946 in Jamaica Hospital in Queens.It lists his father as Fred C. Trump and his mother as Mary Mac Leod. The date of the report is listed as June 14, 1946.
The image came with an accompanying memo from a member of Trump's staff.
"A 'birth certificate' and a 'certificate of live birth' are in no way the same thing, even though in some cases they use some of the same words," wrote Trump staffer Thuy Colayco in a message to ABC News. "One officially confirms and records a newborn child’s identity and details of his or her birth, while the other only confirms that someone reported the birth of a child. Also, a 'certificate of live birth' is very easy to get because the standards are much lower, while a 'birth certificate' is only gotten through a long and detailed process wherein identity must be proved beyond any doubt. If you had only a certificate of live birth, you would not be able to get a proper passport from the Post Office or a driver’s license from the Department of Motor Vehicles. Therefore, there is very significant difference between a 'certificate of live birth' and a 'birth certificate' and one should never be confused with the other."
(Click Here to see a photo of Donald Trump's hospital certificate of birth, obtained by the Newsmax on Monday.)
Trump has been turning up the volume on his calls for Obama, who has been the target of allegations that he was not born in the United States by so-called "birthers," to release his official birth certificate.
"This guy either has a birth certificate or he doesn't," Trump said in an interview on Fox News on Monday. "I didn't think this was such a big deal, but I will tell you, it's turning out to be a very big deal because people now are calling me from all over saying please don't give up on this issue."
The Obama campaign released a "certification of live birth," which is a shorter document that carries the same legal weight as the long one, in 2008.
Trump has brought up the issue again and again. In a recent interview with ABC's "The View," he said that Obama has "a terrible pale that's hanging over with him" because of his refusal to release the document.
Michael Cohen, an executive at the Trump Organization, who has been leading a "Draft Trump" movement insisted that his boss was not a "birther," but rather was attempting to hold the Obama administration, which rode into offices on promises of transparency, accountable.
The misstep, however, indicates how perilous a path this line of attack might be to any of the potential 2012 presidential candidates who choose to pursue it. Already one likely Republican contender, Tim Pawlenty, indicated that Trump’s emphasis on the issue was unwise.
“I, for one, do not believe we should be raising that issue," the former Minnesota governor said in an interview MSNBC on Tuesday. "I think President Obama was born in the United States."
Trump discussed his calls for Obama to release his official birth certificate on ABC's "The View" last week:
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OK OBAMA - YOUR TURN!
