Trump and Moore: Birther Buddies Reunite to Promote More Lies
This article was previously published on ValerieTarico.com.
The current political alliance between President Trump and Roy Moore isn’t new; their collusion goes back at least to 2011, when the two teamed up to promote the birther lie that President Obama was not born in the U.S. They served as active and vocal leaders of this racist cause over the five-year period from 2011 to 2016.
President Obama’s short-form and long-form birth certificates were released by the Dept. of Health of the State of Hawaii, in June 2008 and April 2011 respectively. The birth records show that Barack Hussein Obama II was born at 7:24pm on August 4, 1961, in the Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu, to Stanley Ann Dunham Obama and Barack Hussein Obama.
In the face of this documentary evidence, many early birthers gave up the cause. But not Trump and Moore. They relentlessly continued to promote the lie, claiming in public speeches and interviews that they were privy to inside information that these birth certificates were forgeries.
Moore, who began his involvement in the cause in 2008, declared to World Net Daily in 2010 that there was “substantial evidence that Obama was not born in our country.” Trump, who didn’t publicly join the cause until 2011, tweeted on August 6, 2012, that “an ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud.”
Moore’s “substantial evidence” and Trump’s “extremely credible source” never materialized.
Moore combined his birther claims with the Islamophobic lie that Obama was secretly a Muslim, while Trump cleverly used the lie in his presidential campaigns of 2012 and 2016 to solidify his nationalist, racist, anti-Obama base.
The political effectiveness of the birther lie can be seen in the results of the NBC poll of September 2016. In the responses from registered Republicans, only 28% agreed with the statement that “Barack Obama was born in the United States.” Another 41% disagreed, and 31% stated that they didn’t know one way or the other. The birther lie appears to have sowed doubt about President Obama's birthplace, and thus the legitimacy of his presidency, among nearly three-quarters of registered Republicans.
Trump officially gave up the birther lie on Sept. 16, 2016, with Moore doing so three months later. Trump replaced this lie with another one, however; naming his opponent Hillary Clinton as the originator of the whole birther idea, again without any evidence. And now, in late 2017, Trump has apparently decided to revive the lie, letting people around him know that he still believes it.
The birther lie shows us that Trump and Moore are inveterate liars. So why should we believe them when they deny the credible testimonies of the more than 21 women who have accused one or the other of these men of sexually molesting them? Once again, these “birther buddies” would like us to ignore credible evidence and believe more of their big fat lies.
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