Trump Teases “Big Announcement” on His Birther Beliefs

He may finally say he thinks Obama is actually an American citizen.

Evan Vucci/AP

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Donald Trump said on Friday morning that he’ll make a “big announcement” during a speech at his new Washington, DC hotel regarding his longstanding claims that President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. The announcement may be the first time that Trump publicly says he believes Obama was born in the United States, reversing years of high-profile advocacy for the “birther” movement.

Trump was the most prominent champion of birtherism, a right-wing conspiracy theory that claims Obama was actually born in Kenya and denies that his birth certificates are real. His campaign has recently tried to distance Trump from his birther past. On Thursday, Trump declined to answer a question from the Washington Post about whether he still believed that Obama was not a US citizen. Jason Miller, the Trump campaign’s senior communications adviser, issued a statement later that day saying that “Mr. Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States.?”

As Mother Jones‘ Tim Murphy pointed out, nearly every word of the statement was a lie. Trump has never personally disavowed his birther statements, and the statement falsely claimed that Hillary Clinton started the birther movement during the 2008 and that Trump had stopped discussing the issue after he achieved “closure” by “compelling” the release of Obama’s long-form birth certificate in 2011. Neither statement is true, but Trump repeated one of those claims on Friday morning during an interview on Fox Business Channel. “She is the one that started it and she was unable or incapable of finishing it,” he said. “That’s the way it worked out.”

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate