Birther Movement
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Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...
's campaign for president in
2008 2008 was designated as: *International Year of Languages *International Year of Planet Earth *International Year of the Potato *International Year of Sanitation The Great Recession, a worldwide recession which began in 2007, continued throu ...
, throughout his presidency and afterwards, there was extensive news coverage of Obama's religious preference, birthplace, and of the individuals questioning his
religious belief A belief is a subjective attitude that something is true or a state of affairs is the case. A subjective attitude is a mental state of having some stance, take, or opinion about something. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief ...
and citizenshipefforts eventually known as the "birther movement", or birtherism, names by which it is widely referred to across media. * * * * * * The movement falsely asserted Obama was ineligible to be
President of the United States The president of the United States (POTUS) is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president directs the Federal government of the United States#Executive branch, executive branch of the Federal government of t ...
because he was not a natural-born citizen of the United States as required by Article Two of the Constitution. Studies have found these birther conspiracy theories to be most firmly held by Republicans strong in both political knowledge and racial resentment. Theories alleged that Obama's published
birth certificate A birth certificate is a vital record that documents the Childbirth, birth of a person. The term "birth certificate" can refer to either the original document certifying the circumstances of the birth or to a certified copy of or representation ...
was a forgerythat his actual birthplace was not
Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...
but
Kenya Kenya, officially the Republic of Kenya, is a country located in East Africa. With an estimated population of more than 52.4 million as of mid-2024, Kenya is the 27th-most-populous country in the world and the 7th most populous in Africa. ...
. Other theories alleged that Obama became a citizen of
Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
in childhood, thereby losing his
U.S. citizenship Citizenship of the United States is a legal status that entails Americans with specific rights, duties, protections, and benefits in the United States. It serves as a foundation of fundamental rights derived from and protected by the Constit ...
. Still others claimed that Obama was not a natural-born U.S. citizen because he was born a
dual citizen Multiple citizenship (or multiple nationality) is a person's legal status in which a person is at the same time recognized by more than one sovereign state, country under its nationality law, nationality and citizenship law as a national or cit ...
(British and American). A number of political commentators have characterized these various claims as a racist reaction to Obama's status as the first
African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...
president of the United States. * * * * These claims were promoted by fringe theorists (pejoratively referred to as "birthers"), including businessman and television personality
Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...
, who would later succeed Obama as president. Some theorists sought court rulings to declare Obama ineligible to take office, or to grant access to various documents which they claimed would support such ineligibility; none of these efforts succeeded. Some political opponents, especially in the Republican Party, expressed skepticism about Obama's citizenship or were unwilling to acknowledge it; others proposed legislation that would require presidential candidates to provide proof of eligibility. Theories have persisted despite Obama's pre-election release of his official Hawaiian birth certificate in 2008, confirmation by the
Hawaii Department of Health The Hawaii State Department of Health (DOH) is a state agency of Hawaiʻi, with its headquarters in Honolulu CDP, Honolulu County, on the island of Oʻahu. The Hawai'i Department of Health is organized into three administrations: Health Resour ...
based on the original documents, the April 2011 release of a certified copy of Obama's original Certificate of Live Birth (or ''long-form birth certificate''), and contemporaneous birth announcements published in Hawaii newspapers. Polls conducted in 2010 (before the April 2011 release) suggested that at least 25% of adult Americans said that they doubted Obama's U.S. birth, and a May 2011
Gallup poll Gallup, Inc. is an American multinational analytics and advisory company based in Washington, D.C. Founded by George Gallup in 1935, the company became known for its public opinion polls conducted worldwide. Gallup provides analytics and man ...
found that the percentage had fallen to 13% of American adults (23% of Republicans). The fall was attributed to Obama's release of the long form in April 2011.Welch, Susan et al.
Understanding American Government
'', p. 26 (
Cengage Learning Cengage Group is an American educational content, technology, and services company for higher education, K–12, professional, and library markets. It operates in more than 20 countries around the world.(June 27, 2014Global Publishing Leaders 2 ...
, 2013).
Keller, Bill
"A Theory of Conspiracy Theories"
, ''
The New York Times Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. The magazi ...
'' (June 3, 2011).
Cohen, Jon
"Poll: Number of 'birthers' plummets"
, ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'' (May 5, 2011).


Background


Early life of Barack Obama

People who express doubts about Obama's eligibility or reject details about his early life are often informally called "birthers", a term that parallels the nickname " truthers" for adherents of
9/11 conspiracy theories There are various Conspiracy theory, conspiracy theories that attribute the preparation and execution of the September 11 attacks against the United States to parties other than, or in addition to, al-Qaeda. These include the theory that high ...
. These
conspiracy theorist A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation), when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources: * ...
s reject at least some of the following facts about his early life: Barack Obama was born on August 4, 1961 at the Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital in
Honolulu Honolulu ( ; ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, located in the Pacific Ocean. It is the county seat of the Consolidated city-county, consolidated City and County of Honol ...
,
Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...
,Dan Nakaso
"Twin sisters, Obama on parallel paths for years"
, ''
The Honolulu Advertiser ''The Honolulu Advertiser'' was a daily newspaper published in Honolulu, Hawaii. At the time publication ceased on June 6, 2010, it was the largest daily newspaper in Hawaii. It published daily with special Sunday and Internet editions. ''The ...
'', December 22, 2008. Documents hospital's name change
to
Ann Dunham Stanley Ann Dunham (November 29, 1942 – November 7, 1995) was an American anthropologist who specialized in the economic anthropology and rural development of Indonesia. She was the mother of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the Un ...
,Voell, Paula. (January 20, 2009)
"Teacher from Kenmore recalls Obama was a focused student"
''The Buffalo News'' (New York State). Retrieved June 12, 2010 (archived fro

on July 22, 2011)
from
Wichita, Kansas Wichita ( ) is the List of cities in Kansas, most populous city in the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Sedgwick County, Kansas, Sedgwick County. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population of the city was 397, ...
, and her husband
Barack Obama Sr. Barack Hussein Obama Sr. (; born Baraka Obama, 18 June 1934 – 24 November 1982) was a Kenyan senior governmental economist and the father of Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States. He is a central figure of his son's memoir, ' ...
, a Luo from
Nyang'oma Kogelo Nyang'oma Kogelo, also known as Kogelo, is a village in Siaya County, Kenya. It is located near the equator, 60 kilometres (37 mi) west-northwest of Kisumu, the provincial capital of the former Nyanza province. The population of Nyangom ...
,
Nyanza Province Nyanza Province (; ) was one of Kenya's eight administrative provinces before the formation of the 47 counties under the 2010 constitution. Six counties were organised in the area of the former province. The region is located in the southwes ...
(in what was then the
Colony and Protectorate of Kenya The Colony and Protectorate of Kenya, commonly known as British Kenya or British East Africa, was part of the British Empire in Africa from 1920 until 1963. It was established when the former East Africa Protectorate was transformed into a Brit ...
), who was attending the University of Hawaii. Birth notices for Barack Obama were published in ''
The Honolulu Advertiser ''The Honolulu Advertiser'' was a daily newspaper published in Honolulu, Hawaii. At the time publication ceased on June 6, 2010, it was the largest daily newspaper in Hawaii. It published daily with special Sunday and Internet editions. ''The ...
'' on August 13 and the ''
Honolulu Star-Bulletin The ''Honolulu Star-Bulletin'' was a daily newspaper based in Honolulu, Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States. At the time publication ceased on June 6, 2010, it was the second largest daily newspaper in the state of Hawaii (after the ''Honol ...
'' on August 14, 1961. Obama's father's immigration file also clearly states Barack Obama was born in Hawaii. One of his high school teachers, who was acquainted with his mother at the time, remembered hearing about the day of his birth. Obama's parents were divorced in 1964. He attended kindergarten in 1966–1967 at Noelani Elementary School in Honolulu.
In 1967, his mother married
Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...
n student
Lolo Soetoro Lolo Soetoro ( EYD: Lolo Sutoro; ; 2 January 1935 Google Translate'sEnglish translationLolo studied geography at Gadjah Mada University and got a scholarship from the Indonesian Army Topographic Service. After working for the Indonesian Army Topo ...
, who was also attending the University of Hawaii, and the family moved to
Jakarta Jakarta (; , Betawi language, Betawi: ''Jakartè''), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta (; ''DKI Jakarta'') and formerly known as Batavia, Dutch East Indies, Batavia until 1949, is the capital and largest city of Indonesia and ...
, Indonesia, where Obama attended the Catholic St. Francis of Assisi School before transferring to State Elementary School Menteng 01, an elite Indonesian public school in
Menteng Menteng is a district () in the administrative city of Central Jakarta, Indonesia. Menteng is surrounded by the districts of Senen and Matraman to the east, Tebet and Setiabudi to the south, Tanah Abang to the west, and Gambir to the north. ...
. As a child in Indonesia, Obama was called "Barry Soetoro", reflecting his stepfather's surname, or "Barry Obama", using his father's surname. When he was ten years old, Obama returned to
Honolulu Honolulu ( ; ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, located in the Pacific Ocean. It is the county seat of the Consolidated city-county, consolidated City and County of Honol ...
to live with his maternal grandparents, Madelyn and Stanley Dunham, and has resided continuously in the United States since 1971.


Origins of the claims

In 1991, Obama's literary agency, Acton & Dystel, printed a promotional booklet which misidentified Obama's birthplace, and stated that Obama was "born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii". This error was later included in a biography that remained posted to their website until April 2007. The booklet's editor said that this incorrect information, which was not widely discovered until 2012, had been her mistake and not based on anything provided to her agency by Obama. Conspiracy theories about Obama's religion appeared at least as early as his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign in a press release by Illinois political candidate
Andy Martin Anthony Robert Martin-Trigona, usually known as Andy Martin (born 1945) is an American perennial candidate who has never been elected to office, running as both a Democrat and a Republican. He is a vexatious litigant who has filed over 250 po ...
, and, according to a ''Los Angeles Times'' editorial, as Internet rumors. According to ''
Politico ''Politico'' (stylized in all caps), known originally as ''The Politico'', is an American political digital newspaper company founded by American banker and media executive Robert Allbritton in 2007. It covers politics and policy in the Unit ...
'', rumors Obama was not born in Hawaii began when Obama's popularity proved a threat to
Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, lawyer and diplomat. She was the 67th United States secretary of state in the administration of Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, a U.S. senator represent ...
. ''Politico'' wrote: "That theory first emerged in the spring of 2008..." (There is no evidence that Clinton herself or members of her campaign staff were involved in this effort.) The earliest known appearance of the notion on a conservative blogger website was March 5, 2008, and it was not about his birth, but was about "dual citizenship or split loyalties". In April of that year, some supporters of Hillary Clinton circulated anonymous chain emails repeating the same rumor; among them was an Iowa campaign volunteer, who was fired when the story emerged. These and numerous other chain e-mails during the subsequent presidential election circulated false rumors about Obama's origin, religion, and birth certificate. On June 9, 2008,
Jim Geraghty James Richard "Jim" Geraghty ( ; born July 5, 1975) is the senior political correspondent of ''National Review'' and author of several books. In addition to writing for ''National Review'', Geraghty blogs for ''National Review Online'' and is a fo ...
of the conservative website ''
National Review Online ''National Review'' is an American conservative editorial magazine, focusing on news and commentary pieces on political, social, and cultural affairs. The magazine was founded by William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. Its editor-in-chief is Rich Lo ...
'' suggested that Obama release his birth certificate.Geraghty, Jim (June 9, 2008)
"Obama Could Debunk Some Rumors By Releasing His Birth Certificate"
, The Campaign Spot, ''National Review Online''.
Geraghty wrote that releasing his birth certificate could debunk several false rumors circulating on the Internet, namely: that his middle name was originally Muhammad rather than Hussein; that his mother had originally named him "Barry" rather than "Barack"; and that Barack Obama Sr. was not his biological father, as well as the rumor that Barack Obama was not a natural-born citizen. In August 2008, Philip J. Berg, a former member of the Democratic State Committee of Pennsylvania, brought an unsuccessful lawsuit against Obama, which alleged "that Obama was born in Mombasa, Kenya." In October 2008, an
NPR National Public Radio (NPR) is an American public broadcasting organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It serves as a national Radio syndication, syndicator to a network of more ...
article referred to "Kenyan-born" Senator Barack Obama.Trial and Triumph: Stories Out Of Africa
NPR, October 9, 2008
Also that month, anonymous e-mails circulated claiming that the
Associated Press The Associated Press (AP) is an American not-for-profit organization, not-for-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association, and produces news reports that are dist ...
(AP) had reported Obama was "Kenyan-born". The claims were based on an AP story that had appeared five years earlier in a Kenyan publication, ''
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''. The rumor-checking website
Snopes.com ''Snopes'' (), formerly known as the ''Urban Legends Reference Pages'', is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source ...
found that the headline and lead-in sentence describing Obama as born in Kenya and misspelling his first name had been added by the Kenyan newspaper, and did not appear in the story issued by the AP or in any other contemporary newspaper that picked up the AP story. In 2012, the
far-right Far-right politics, often termed right-wing extremism, encompasses a range of ideologies that are marked by ultraconservatism, authoritarianism, ultranationalism, and nativism. This political spectrum situates itself on the far end of the ...
website
Breitbart ''Breitbart News Network'' (; known commonly as ''Breitbart News'', ''Breitbart'', or ''Breitbart.com'') is an Radical right (United States), American far-rightMultiple sources: * * * * * * * * * * * * syndicated news, opinion, and commentar ...
published a copy of the promotional booklet printed by Acton & Dystel in 1991.


Release of the birth certificates


Short form, 2008

On June 12, 2008, Obama's campaign responded to the rumors by posting an image of Obama's birth certificate on the "'' Fight the Smears''" website. The image is a scan of a laser-printed document obtained from and certified by the Hawaii Department of Health on June 6, 2007. It is a "Certification of Live Birth", sometimes referred to as a short form birth certificate, and contains less information than the longer "Certificate of Live Birth", which Hawaii no longer issues. Asked about this, Hawaiian Department of Health spokeswoman Janice Okubo explained that Hawaii stopped issuing the longer "Certificate" in 2001 when their birth records were "put into electronic files for consistent reporting", and therefore Hawaii "does not have a short-form or long-form certificate". A "record of live birth", partially handwritten and partially typed, was created and submitted in 1961 when Obama was born, and is "located in a bound volume in a file cabinet on the first floor of the state Department of Health". The document was used to create the state's electronic records, and has been examined by state officials multiple times since the controversy began. In releasing the certificate, the Obama website declared that the rumors "aren't actually about that piece of paperthey're about manipulating people into thinking Barack is not an American citizen." The campaign also provided the
Daily Kos Daily Kos ( ) is a group blog and internet forum focused on the U.S. Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party and Modern liberalism in the United States, liberal American politics. The site publishes blog posts, polls, election and cam ...
blog with a copy of the document. Referring to this release, ''
National Review ''National Review'' is an American conservative editorial magazine, focusing on news and commentary pieces on political, social, and cultural affairs. The magazine was founded by William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. Its editor-in-chief is Rich L ...
'' columnist Jim Geraghty, wrote on June 12, 2008: Frequent arguments of those questioning Obama's eligibility related to the fact that he did not originally release a copy of his "original" or "long form" birth certificate, but rather a "short form" version that did not include all of the information given on 1961 Hawaii-issued birth certificates. It was claimed that the use of the term "certification of live birth" on the first document means it is not equivalent to a "birth certificate". These arguments have been debunked numerous times by media investigations, every judicial forum that has addressed the matter, and Hawaiian government officialsamong whom a consensus has been reached that the document released by the Obama campaign is indeed his official birth certificate. The director of the state Department of Human Health confirmed that the state "has Senator Obama's original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures". The short form is "''
prima facie ''Prima facie'' (; ) is a Latin expression meaning "at first sight", or "based on first impression". The literal translation would be "at first face" or "at first appearance", from the feminine forms of ' ("first") and ' ("face"), both in the a ...
'' evidence of the fact of birth in any court proceeding." Arizona Tea Party leader and legislator Kelly Townsend pressed legislation to stop Obama from appearing on the ballot in the 2012 election in Arizona without providing proof of birth and also approached
Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...
with the conspiracy.


Rejection by conspiracy theorists

The release of the certificate in 2008 resulted in a fresh round of questions. It was asserted that the certificate had been digitally forged with
Adobe Photoshop Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc., Adobe for Microsoft Windows, Windows and macOS. It was created in 1987 by Thomas Knoll, Thomas and John Knoll. It is the most used tool for professional digital ...
and lacked a stamped seal of the state, which led them to demand that Obama release his "original" 1961 birth certificate. Jerome Corsi, author of the book '' The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality'', told
Fox News The Fox News Channel (FNC), commonly known as Fox News, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Conservatism in the United States, conservative List of news television channels, news and political commentary Television stati ...
that "the campaign has a false, fake birth certificate posted on their website... it's been shown to have watermarks from Photoshop. It's a fake document that's on the Web site right now, and the original birth certificate the campaign refuses to produce." This view was rejected by FactCheck.org, which viewed the Obama campaign's hard copy of the Certification of Live Birth and reported that: Corsi continued to cast doubt on Obama's birth certificate as late as March 2019. In a CNN interview, he stated, "I want to see the original 1961 birth records from Kenya, that'll settle it... the State of Hawaii will not show those records to anyone." Corsi's attorney,
Larry Klayman Larry Elliot Klayman (born July 20, 1951) is an American attorney, right-wing activist, and former U.S. Justice Department prosecutor. He founded both Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch. In addition to his numerous lawsuits against the Clinton ad ...
, falsely asserted during the same interview, "the birth certificate uses the word 'African-American' in 1961."


Hawaii Department of Health response

The director of Hawaii's Department of Health, Chiyome Fukino, issued a statement confirming that the state held Obama's "original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures". Noting "there have been numerous requests for Senator Barack Hussein Obama's official birth certificate," Fukino explained that the department was prohibited by state law from releasing it to "persons who do not have a tangible interest in the vital record". She said: "No state official, including Governor
Linda Lingle Linda Lingle (; June 4, 1953) is an American politician who served as the sixth governor of Hawaii from 2002 to 2010. She was the first Republican elected governor of Hawaii since 1959, and was the state's first female and first Jewish govern ...
, has ever instructed that this vital record be handled in a manner different from any other vital record in the possession of the State of Hawaii." According to the website TVNewser,
CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...
's researchers stated in 2009 that the original birth certificate no longer existed, as Hawaii discarded all paper birth records in 2001, and the certification of live birth was the official copy. Contradicting this report, Janice Okubo, public information officer for the Hawaii DOH, said "We don't destroy vital records." The Health Department's director emphasized the assertion: Joshua Wisch, a spokesman for the Hawaii Attorney General's office, stated in 2011 that the original "long form" birth certificatedescribed by Hawaiian officials as a "record of live birth" kept in the archives of the Hawaii Department of Health is "...a Department of Health record and it can't be released to anybody", including President Obama. Wisch added that state law does not authorize photocopying such records.


Long form, 2011

On April 22, 2011, Obama asked Loretta Fuddy, director of the Hawaii Department of Health, for certified copies of his original Certificate of Live Birth ("long-form birth certificate"). Accompanying the letter was a written request from Judith Corley, Obama's personal counsel, requesting a waiver of the department's policy of issuing only computer-generated certificates. Corley stated that granting the waiver would relieve the department of the burden of repeated inquiries into the President's birth records. On April 25, 2011, Fuddy approved the request and witnessed the copying process as the health department's registrar issued the certified copies. The same day, Corley personally visited the department headquarters in Honolulu to pay the required fee on Obama's behalf, and received the two requested certified copies of the original birth certificate, an accompanying letter from Fuddy attesting to the authenticity of same, and a receipt for the processing fee. Fuddy said that she had granted the exception to its normal policy of issuing only computer-generated copies by virtue of Obama's status, in an effort to avoid ongoing requests for the birth certificate. On April 27, 2011, White House staffers gave reporters a copy of the certificate, and posted a PDF image of the certificate on the White House website. The certificate reconfirmed the information on the official short-form certificate released in 2008, and provided additional details such as the name of the hospital at which Obama was born.


Rejection by conspiracy theorists

A claim put forth by the ''
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'' that the newly released document was a forgery made with image editing software quickly spread on the Internet. Nathan Goulding, chief technology officer of the ''
National Review ''National Review'' is an American conservative editorial magazine, focusing on news and commentary pieces on political, social, and cultural affairs. The magazine was founded by William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. Its editor-in-chief is Rich L ...
'' magazine, dismissed the matter of "layered components" found in the White House PDF by suggesting "that whoever scanned the birth certificate in Hawaii forgot to turn off the OCR setting on the scanner." Nathan added, "I've confirmed that scanning an image, converting it to a PDF, optimizing that PDF, and then opening it up in Illustrator, does in fact create layers similar to what is seen in the birth certificate PDF. You can try it yourself at home."


"Showing papers"

Goldie Taylor, a commentator for the African American news site ''
The Grio TheGrio is a brand name owned by American media company Allen Media Group for a television network and a website aimed at African-Americans. History TheGrio is to "focus on news and events that have a unique interest and pronounced impact with ...
'', characterized the demand that Obama provide his birth certificate as an equivalent of making him "show his papers", as blacks were once required to do under
Jim Crow laws The Jim Crow laws were U.S. state, state and local laws introduced in the Southern United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that enforced Racial segregation in the United States, racial segregation, "Jim Crow (character), Ji ...
. Sociologist Matthew W. Hughey has cited many of the claims as evidence of racial "
othering In philosophy, the Other is a fundamental concept referring to anyone or anything perceived as distinct or different from oneself. This distinction is crucial for understanding how individuals construct their own identities, as the encounter wit ...
" of Obama against the conflation of the
White Anglo-Saxon Protestant In the United States, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants or Wealthy Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASP) is a Sociology, sociological term which is often used to describe White Americans, white Protestantism in the United States, Protestant Americans of E ...
(WASP) subject as the ideal and authentic American citizen.


False claims


Born in Kenya

Some opponents of Obama's presidential eligibility claim that he was born in Kenya and was therefore not born a United States citizen. Whether Obama having been born outside the U.S. would have invalidated his U.S. citizenship at birth is debated.
Political commentator A pundit is a person who offers opinion in an authoritative manner on a particular subject area (typically politics, the social sciences, technology or sport), usually through the mass media. The term pundit describes both women and men, altho ...
Andrew Malcolm, of the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
'', wrote that Obama would still be eligible for the presidency, regardless of where he was born, because his mother was an American citizen, saying that Obama's mother "could have been on Mars when wee Barry emerged and he'd still be American." A contrary view is promoted by
UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...
Law Professor
Eugene Volokh Eugene Volokh (; born Yevhen Volodymyrovych Volokh (); February 29, 1968) is an American legal scholar known for his scholarship in American constitutional law and Libertarianism in the United States, libertarianism as well as his prominent leg ...
, who has said that in the hypothetical scenario that Obama was born outside the U.S., he would be a natural-born citizen, since the then-applicable law would have required Obama's mother to have been in the U.S. at least "five years after the age of 14", but it was three months before Ann Dunham's 19th birthday when Obama was born.Volokh interpreted the law differently in , but later posted a correction at


Obama's paternal step-grandmother's version of events

An incorrect but popularly reported claim is that his father's stepmother, Sarah Obama, told
Anabaptist Anabaptism (from Neo-Latin , from the Greek language, Greek : 're-' and 'baptism'; , earlier also )Since the middle of the 20th century, the German-speaking world no longer uses the term (translation: "Re-baptizers"), considering it biased. ...
Bishop Ron McRae in a recorded transatlantic telephone conversation that she was present when Obama was born in Kenya. The
McClatchy newspapers McClatchy Media Company, or simply McClatchy and MCC, is an American publishing company incorporated under Delaware's General Corporation Law. Originally based in Sacramento, California, United States, and known as The McClatchy Company, it ...
gave an explanation of how the story about Obama's step-grandmother began. The tape is cut off in the middle of the conversation, before the passage in which she clarifies her meaning: "'Obama was not born in
Mombasa Mombasa ( ; ) is a coastal city in southeastern Kenya along the Indian Ocean. It was the first capital of British East Africa, before Nairobi was elevated to capital status in 1907. It now serves as the capital of Mombasa County. The town is ...
. He was born in America,' the translator says after talking to the woman.... Another response later says, 'Obama in Hawaii. Hawaii. She says he was born in Hawaii.'" Sarah Obama shed more light on the controversy in a 2007 interview with the ''
Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1847, it was formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan from which its once integrated WGN (AM), WGN radio and ...
'', in which she stated that six months after Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham were married, she received a letter at her home in Kenya announcing the birth of Barack Obama II, who was born August 4, 1961. In a June 2012 interview at her Kenyan home, Sarah Obama was asked: "Some people want to believe that the president was born in Kenya. Have these people ever bothered you or asked for his birth certificate?" Her response was: "But Barack Obama wasn't born in Kenya."


Fake Kenyan birth certificate

On August 2, 2009,
Orly Taitz Orly Taitz (; born August 30, 1960) is an Israeli-American political conspiracy theorist and political candidate. A dentist, lawyer, and former real estate agent, Taitz was a figure in the "birther" movement, which promoted the conspiracy the ...
released and attached to court documents a purported Kenyan birth certificate which she said, if authenticated and shown to be genuine, would significantly narrow and shorten the discovery and pre-trial litigation period in the ''Keyes v. Bowen'' lawsuit, in which the plaintiffs asked for a judicial order that Obama provide documentation that he is a natural-born citizen of the United States. Legal papers submitted describe the document as an "unauthenticated color photocopy of certified copy of registration of birth". The document was almost immediately revealed to be a forgery. It purports to have been issued by the "Republic of Kenya", when in fact, such a state did not yet exist at the time of Obama's birth as indicated on the document (Kenya was a
British colony A Crown colony or royal colony was a colony governed by England, and then Great Britain or the United Kingdom within the English and later British Empire. There was usually a governor to represent the Crown, appointed by the British monarch on ...
until 1963). Subsequently, evidence was unearthed that the alleged Kenyan birth certificate was a modified version of a 1959 Australian birth certificate found on an online genealogy website. The ''
Washington Independent The American Independent is a pseudo-news organization funded by Democratic Party political action committees. According to the organization, its aim is to support journalism which exposes "the nexus of conservative power in Washington." The cur ...
'' website cited an
anonymous blogger An anonymous blog is a blog without any acknowledged author or contributor. Anonymous bloggers may achieve anonymity through the simple use of a pseudonym, or through more sophisticated techniques such as layered encryption routing, manipulation o ...
as having taken responsibility for the forgery and posting four photos substantiating his claim.


Not born in Hawaii

Despite the existence of Obama's Hawaii certification of live birth, Terry Lakin's attorney, among others, have claimed that anyone, including foreign-born children, could acquire a Hawaiian certification of live birth, and so Obama's possession of such a certificate does not prove that he was born in Hawaii. However, the suggestion that this could have applied to Obama was rejected by Janice Okubo, director of communications for the Hawaii Department of Health: "If you were born in
Bali Bali (English:; Balinese language, Balinese: ) is a Provinces of Indonesia, province of Indonesia and the westernmost of the Lesser Sunda Islands. East of Java and west of Lombok, the province includes the island of Bali and a few smaller o ...
, for example, you could get a certificate from the state of Hawaii saying you were born in Bali. You could not get a certificate saying you were born in Honolulu. The state has to verify a fact like that for it to appear on the certificate." Another fact that refutes this specific claim is that the law allowing foreign-born children to obtain Hawaiian birth certificates did not exist until 20 years after Obama was born, while Obama's published birth certificate says his birth information was recorded four days after his birth in 1961, and explicitly states that he was born in Honolulu. Additionally, some people claim that the information in the birth certificate only has to be based on the testimony of one parent. On July 27, 2009, Fukino issued a statement explicitly stating she has "seen the original vital records maintained on file by the Hawaii State Department of Health verifying Barack Hussein Obama was born in Hawaii and is a natural-born American citizen". Hawaiian Department of Health spokeswoman Janice Okubo elaborated on state policy for the release of vital records: "If someone from Obama's campaign gave us permission in person and presented some kind of verification that he or she was Obama's designee, we could release the vital record." Martin was seeking "a copy of Obama's birth certificate, and related files and records". A hospital spokesperson at Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women & Children has said that their standard procedure is to neither confirm nor deny Obama was born there, "even though all the information out there says he was born at Kapiolani Hospital", citing federal privacy laws. In 1961, birth notices for Barack Obama were published in both the ''
Honolulu Advertiser ''The Honolulu Advertiser'' was a daily newspaper published in Honolulu, Hawaii. At the time publication ceased on June 6, 2010, it was the largest daily newspaper in Hawaii. It published daily with special Sunday and Internet editions. ''The ...
'' and the ''
Honolulu Star-Bulletin The ''Honolulu Star-Bulletin'' was a daily newspaper based in Honolulu, Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States. At the time publication ceased on June 6, 2010, it was the second largest daily newspaper in the state of Hawaii (after the ''Honol ...
'' on August 13 and 14, 1961, respectively, listing the home address of Obama's parents as 6085 Kalanianaole Highway in Honolulu. On November 9, 2008, in response to the persistent rumors, the ''Advertiser'' posted on its web site a screenshot of the announcement taken from its microfilmed archives. Such notices were sent to newspapers routinely by the Hawaii Department of Health. In an editorial published on July 29, 2009, the ''Star-Bulletin'' pointed out that both newspapers' vital-statistics columns are available on microfilm in the main state library. "Were the state Department of Health and Obama's parents really in cahoots to give false information to the newspapers .." the newspaper asked.


Lost U.S. citizenship

It has been suggested that Obama obtained Indonesian citizenship (and thus may have lost U.S. citizenship) when he lived there as a child. As an attempt to prove that Obama was no longer a U.S. citizen (or held dual citizenship), some claim his 1981 trip to Pakistan took place at a time when there was supposedly a ban on United States passport holders entering that country, which would in turn have required him to use a non-U.S. passport. There was in fact no such ban. A ''New York Times'' article and
U.S. State Department The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs ...
travel advisories from 1981 make it clear that travel to Pakistan by U.S. passport holders was legal at that time. An
April Fools' Day April Fools' Day or April Fool's Day (rarely called All Fools' Day) is an annual custom on the 1st of April consisting of practical jokes, hoaxes, and pranks. Jokesters often expose their actions by shouting "April Fool " at the recipient. ...
hoax email circulated on the Internet starting in 2009. It falsely claimed that Obama applied to Occidental College under the name "Barry Soetoro" claiming to be "a foreign student from Indonesia" in order to obtain a
Fulbright scholarship The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people ...
(which does not exist for undergraduate students from Indonesia).


Disputes over "natural-born citizen" requirements

Another theory of Obama's ineligibility is that, regardless of his place of birth, he does not meet the constitutional definition of a
natural-born citizen A natural-born-citizen clause is a provision in some constitutions that certain officers, usually the head of state, must be "natural-born" citizens of that state, but there is no universally accepted meaning for the term ''natural-born''. The c ...
. The
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Considered one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses Citizenship of the United States ...
states: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States..." According to law professor Gabriel J. Chin, "there is agreement that 'natural born citizens' include those made citizens by birth under the 14th Amendment." Despite this agreement, two similar but distinct theories nonetheless contend Obama, although born in Hawaii, does not qualify as a "natural-born citizen".


Parental citizenship

Some campaigners, such as the Tennessee-based Liberty Legal Foundation, contend that in order for a person to be a natural-born citizen within the meaning of Article II, Section 1, it is necessary that both parents be U.S. citizens at the time of that person's birth. Those who subscribe to this theory argue that since Obama's father was not a U.S. citizen, Obama could not have been a natural-born citizen, and is therefore ineligible to be President of the United States. The Liberty Legal Foundation has cited a passage in the decision on an 1875 voting rights case which came before the U.S. Supreme Court''
Minor v. Happersett ''Minor v. Happersett'', 88 U.S. (21 Wall.) 162 (1875), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that citizenship does not confer a right to vote, and therefore state laws barring women from voting are constitutionally vali ...
''in which the court stated there was no doubt that "all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens" were natural-born citizens. This legal theory on Obama's eligibility was unsuccessfully litigated several times, most notably in '' Ankeny v. Governor of the State of Indiana'' (2008).


Dual citizenship with United Kingdom

Others, including New Jersey attorney Leo Donofrio, in '' Donofrio v. Wells'', have claimed that a person cannot be a natural-born citizen if he is a dual citizen at birth. Donofrio argued that because Obama's father was a
British subject The term "British subject" has several different meanings depending on the time period. Before 1949, it referred to almost all subjects of the British Empire (including the United Kingdom, Dominions, and colonies, but excluding protectorates ...
at the time Obama was born, Obama was born a dual citizen and therefore was not a natural-born citizen. On December 8, 2008, the Court declined without comment to hear the case.


Dual citizenship with Kenya

In August 2008, the ''
Rocky Mountain News The ''Rocky Mountain News'' (nicknamed the ''Rocky'') was a daily newspaper published in Denver, Colorado, from April 23, 1859, until February 27, 2009. It was owned by the E. W. Scripps Company from 1926 until its closing. the Monday–Friday ...
'' ran an online article asserting that Obama was a U.S.-Kenyan dual citizen. Obama actually was born a
citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies The term "British subject" has several different meanings depending on the time period. Before 1949, it referred to almost all subjects of the British Empire (including the United Kingdom, Dominions, and colonies, but excluding protectorates ...
(CUKC) under British law by virtue of having a Kenyan father at a time when Kenya was a British colony, though he lost his CUKC citizenship and became a Kenyan citizen when Kenya became independent in 1963. However, Kenya's 1963 constitution prohibited
dual citizenship Multiple citizenship (or multiple nationality) is a person's legal status in which a person is at the same time recognized by more than one sovereign state, country under its nationality law, nationality and citizenship law as a national or cit ...
among adults; Obama therefore automatically lost his Kenyan citizenship on his 23rd birthday in 1984, by failing to formally renounce any non-Kenyan citizenship and swear an oath of allegiance to Kenya. The ''Rocky Mountain News'' apologized for the error and published a correction, but the article continued to fuel online rumors about Obama's eligibility for the presidency. The current Kenyan constitution, effective since 2010, permits dual citizenship, but requires those who lost Kenyan citizenship prior to 2010 to complete a registration process to regain it.


Campaigners and proponents

Notable advocates of the view that Obama may not be eligible for the Presidency include Philip J. Berg, a
Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...
attorney and 9/11 conspiracy theorist. Berg describes himself as a "moderate to liberal" Democrat who backed
Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, lawyer and diplomat. She was the 67th United States secretary of state in the administration of Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, a U.S. senator represent ...
for president. Another notable advocate is
Alan Keyes Alan Lee Keyes (born August 7, 1950) is an American politician, political scientist, and perennial candidate who served as the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs from 1985 to 1987. A member of the Republican P ...
, who was defeated by Obama in the 2004 Illinois U.S. Senate election, served as a diplomat in the
Reagan administration Ronald Reagan's tenure as the 40th president of the United States began with his first inauguration on January 20, 1981, and ended on January 20, 1989. Reagan, a Republican from California, took office following his landslide victory over ...
, and is currently a media personality and self-described "conservative political activist".
Orly Taitz Orly Taitz (; born August 30, 1960) is an Israeli-American political conspiracy theorist and political candidate. A dentist, lawyer, and former real estate agent, Taitz was a figure in the "birther" movement, which promoted the conspiracy the ...
, a California dentist and attorney who emigrated from the
Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
to
Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...
, then to the United States, and holds dual U.S. and Israeli citizenship, has been called the "queen bee of the birthers", because she is often seen as the face of the movement. Other notable advocates include
Andy Martin Anthony Robert Martin-Trigona, usually known as Andy Martin (born 1945) is an American perennial candidate who has never been elected to office, running as both a Democrat and a Republican. He is a vexatious litigant who has filed over 250 po ...
, a perennial candidate who was "widely credited with starting the cyberwhisper campaign" that Obama is a secret Muslims, Muslim, and Robert L. Schulz, a Tax protester (United States), tax protester and activist who placed full-page advertisements in the ''
Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1847, it was formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan from which its once integrated WGN (AM), WGN radio and ...
'' in December 2008 arguing that Obama had been born in Kenya or had subsequently renounced U.S. citizenship.
Larry Klayman Larry Elliot Klayman (born July 20, 1951) is an American attorney, right-wing activist, and former U.S. Justice Department prosecutor. He founded both Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch. In addition to his numerous lawsuits against the Clinton ad ...
, founder of both Judicial Watch and Freedom Watch, expressed doubts about Obama's natural-born citizenship. The Constitution Party (United States), Constitution Party, a paleoconservative Third party (United States), third party, also campaigned for release of Obama's original long-form certificate. In December 2008, Alex Koppelman, a senior writer for ''Salon'', characterized nearly all of the prominent people promoting the story Obama was not eligible to be presidentincluding Jerome Corsi, Philip Berg, Andy Martin, and Robert Schultzas having a "history of conspiracist thought". The website AmericaMustKnow.com encouraged visitors to lobby members of the Electoral College (United States), Electoral College to vote against Obama's confirmation as President and become faithless electors. Electors around the country received numerous letters and e-mails contending that Obama's birth certificate is a forgery and that he was born in Kenya, and requesting that Obama be denied the presidency. Some of the online campaigners coordinated their efforts with weekly conference calls, in which they discussed the latest news and how to advance the story. The campaign was supported by the far-right WorldNetDaily (''WND'') website, which sponsored a letter-writing campaign to the Supreme Court. The website's founder, Joseph Farah, offered a $15,000 award for the release of the certificate and has written a number of editorials arguing that Obama's eligibility needs to be confirmed. ''WND'' also mounted an advertising campaign, using electronic billboards to ask, "Where's The Birth Certificate?" Farah declined to pay the promised award upon the release of the certificate and alleged that it was "fraudulent". The talk radio hosts Michael Savage (commentator), Michael Savage, G. Gordon Liddy, Brian Sussman, Lars Larson, Bob Grant (radio host), Bob Grant, Jim Quinn, The War Room with Quinn and Rose, Rose Tennent, Barbara Simpson, Mark Davis (talk show host), Mark Davis, and Fred Grandy have all promoted the ineligibility claims on their radio shows. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs have also broached the issue several times on their shows. Savage, during an episode of his nationally syndicated radio show ''The Savage Nation'', said that "We're getting ready for the Communist takeover of America with a noncitizen at the helm." Some celebrities have promoted or touched upon the ineligibility claims. In August 2009, actor Chuck Norris, while not embracing the eligibility claims, wrote an open letter to Obama urging that he officially release his "original birth certificate", saying, "Refusing to post your original birth certificate is an unwise political and leadership decision that is enabling the 'birther' controversy." In December 2010, Baltimore Orioles baseball player Luke Scott (baseball), Luke Scott asserted in a Yahoo! interview that Obama "was not born here" and that his birth certificate was never released. ''The Huffington Post'' reported that, in April 2011 during his stage show, Charlie Sheen said, "For starters, I was fucking born here, how about that? And I got proof! Nothing photoshopped about my birth certificate." According to Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, "the birther movement has gained a large following on the radical right... it has been adopted by the most noxious elements out there." Some of those "noxious elements" include a number of avowed white supremacist and Neo-Nazism, neo-Nazi groups. James Wenneker von Brunn, an avowed white supremacist charged as the gunman in the June 10, 2009, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting, had previously posted messages to the Internet accusing Obama and the media of hiding documents about his life. In March 2017, after Obama was no longer the president, Malik Obama, his paternal half brother, posted on Twitter an image of a fake Kenyan birth certificate, which had been "debunked" in 2009 when it was first presented as part of one of the failed lawsuits that challenged Obama's ineligibility.


Donald Trump

Donald Trump was a prominent promoter of birther conspiracy theories. This elevated Trump's political profile in the years leading up to his successful Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign, 2016 presidential campaign. According to political scientists John M. Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck, Trump "became a virtual spokesperson for the 'birther' movement. When Trump suggested running for president in 2011, his popularity was concentrated among the sizable share of Republicans who thought that President Obama was foreign born or a Muslim or both." In 2010, at the urging of Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen (lawyer), Michael Cohen, the ''National Enquirer'' began promoting a potential Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign, Trump presidential campaign, and with Cohen's involvement, the tabloid began questioning Obama's birthplace and citizenship. In March 2011, during an interview on ''Good Morning America'', Donald Trump said he was seriously considering running for president, that he was a "little" skeptical of Obama's citizenship, and that someone who shares this view should not be so quickly dismissed as an "idiot" (as Trump considers the term "birther" to be "derogatory"). Trump added, "Growing up no one knew him," a claim ranked Pants-on-Fire by PolitiFact. Later, Trump appeared on ''The View (U.S. TV series), The View'' repeating several times that "I want him [Obama] to show his birth certificate." He speculated that "there [was] something on that birth certificate that [Obama] doesn't like", a comment which host Whoopi Goldberg described as "the biggest pile of dog mess I've heard in ages". On the March 30, 2011, edition of ''CNN Newsroom'', anchor Suzanne Malveaux commented on Trump's statements, pointing out that she had made a documentary for which she had gone to Hawaii and spoken with people who knew Obama as a child. In an NBC TV interview broadcast on April 7, 2011, Trump said he would not let go of the issue, because he was not satisfied that Obama had proved his citizenship. After Trump began making his views public, he was contacted by Joseph Farah of ''WorldNetDaily'', who was reportedly on the phone with Trump every day for a week, providing Trump with a "birther primer", answers to questions, and advice. After Obama released his long-form birth certificate on April 27, 2011, Trump said "I am really honored and I am really proud, that I was able to do something that nobody else could do.""Birtherism Is Dead, But the Birther Industry Continues"
. ''Time''. April 27, 2011
On October 24, 2012, Trump offered to donate five million dollars to the charity of Obama's choice in return for the publication of his college and passport applications before October 31, 2012. On September 16, 2016, as the Republican Party presidential nominee, Trump conceded that "President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period." Trump gave himself credit for putting the controversy to rest and also repeated a false claim that Hillary Clinton, his opponent in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and one of Obama's opponents in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, had started the controversy concerning Obama's place of birth in order to harm the candidacy of Obama while boosting her own. While those who did so were Clinton supporters, there is no evidence of Clinton or her campaign questioning Obama's birthplace.


Joe Arpaio

Volunteer investigators working under the direction of Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio have asserted that Obama's birth certificate is a computer-generated forgery. Rejecting this claim, an assistant to Hawaii's attorney general stated in July 2012 that "President Obama was born in Honolulu, and his birth certificate is valid.... Regarding the latest allegations from a sheriff in Arizona, they are untrue, misinformed and misconstrue Hawaii law." Arizona state officials, including Governor Jan Brewer and Secretary of State Ken Bennett, have also dismissed Arpaio's objections and accepted the validity of Obama's birth certificate. Alex Pareene, a staff writer for ''Salon (website), Salon'', wrote regarding a May 2012 trip to Hawaii by Arpaio's people that "I think we have long since passed the point at which I'd find this story believable in a fictional setting." In December 2016, Arpaio presented "9 points of forgery" that he said proved that the digital image of Obama's long form birth certificate was not authentic. He said he would submit his evidence to federal authorities.


Matthew Hill

Rep. Matthew Hill, one of a handful of Tennessee General Assembly members widely reported at the time to be birthers, demanded in 2009 that newly-elected president Obama should be compelled to present Hill and other Tennessee state legislators with a certified copy of his Hawaiian birth certificate. Hill interviewed birther conspiracy advocate
Orly Taitz Orly Taitz (; born August 30, 1960) is an Israeli-American political conspiracy theorist and political candidate. A dentist, lawyer, and former real estate agent, Taitz was a figure in the "birther" movement, which promoted the conspiracy the ...
at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville for a February 10, 2009, segment podcasted online by the IRN/USA Radio Network. During ''The Matthew Hill Show'' he stated:
We've said on this program many times... we've had people call in and say why are you picking on him? And I've said, "Look it's really simple. If he is a U.S. citizen you produce the papers. If he's not a U.S. citizen, what does he do? He hides them. He's hiding them. We need the truth. We need the documents unsealed. We need to know what's going on.


Roy Moore

U.S. Senate candidate and former Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court Roy Moore first questioned Obama's citizenship in 2008, and said in 2016 that he didn't believe Obama had natural-born citizenship.


Richard Shelby

In February 2009, the ''Cullman Times'', an Alabama newspaper, reported that at a town hall meeting there, U.S. Senator from Alabama Richard Shelby was asked if there was any truth to the rumors that Obama was not a natural-born citizen. According to the ''Times'' report, Shelby said, "Well his father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii, but I haven't seen any birth certificate. You have to be born in America to be president." A Shelby spokesperson denied the story, but the newspaper stood by it.


Roy Blunt

On July 28, 2009, Mike Stark approached Missouri Congressman Roy Blunt asking him about the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama is not a natural-born citizen. Blunt responded: "What I don't know is why the President can't produce a birth certificate. I don't know anybody else that can't produce one. And I think that's a legitimate question. No health records, no birth certificate." Blunt's spokesperson later claimed that the quote was taken out of context.


Jean Schmidt

After giving a speech at the Voice of America Freedom Rally in West Chester Township, Butler County, Ohio, West Chester, Ohio on September 5, 2009, Republican congresswoman Jean Schmidt replied to a woman who commented that Obama was ineligible for the Presidency, "I agree with you. But the courts don't." Schmidt's office subsequently responded that a video clip of this comment was "taken out of context", and reiterated that her stated position is that Obama is a citizen. She had earlier voted to certify the Electoral College vote affirming his presidency, and had said she believes Obama is a U.S. citizen.


Nathan Deal

In November 2009, then-Representative Nathan Deal replied to a question about whether he believed that Obama "is a native-born American citizen who is eligible to serve as president" with a statement that "I am joining several of my colleagues in the House in writing a letter to the President asking that he release a copy of his birth certificate so we can have an answer to this question." Contrasting the differing fates of Deal, who won the Georgia gubernatorial election, 2010, 2010 gubernatorial election in Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia, and former Democratic Representative Cynthia McKinney, who lost her primary after endorsing 9/11 conspiracy theories, David Weigel of ''Slate (magazine), Slate'' noted: "Dipping a toe into the birtherism fever swamp didn't stop Deal from winning a statewide primary."


Sarah Palin

During a December 3, 2009 interview on Rusty Humphries' radio talk show, Humphries asked Sarah Palin if she would make Obama's birth certificate a campaign issue in 2012, should she decide to run. Palin responded, "I think the public rightfully is still making it an issue. I don't have a problem with that. I don't know if I would have to bother to make it an issue, because I think that members of the electorate still want answers... I think it's a fair question, just like I think past association and past voting recordsall of that is fair game. The McCain-Palin campaign didn't do a good enough job in that area." After news organizations and blogs picked up the quotation, Palin stated on her Facebook page that voters have the right to ask questions, and that she had herself never asked Obama to produce a birth certificate. She likened the questioning of Obama's birth certificate to questions raised during the United States presidential elections, 2008, 2008 presidential elections about her maternity to her son, Trig. This analogy was criticized by Mark Milian of the ''
Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...
'', who said: "It's not like Barack Obama hosted a radio show and called her a baby faker."


Tracey Mann

Tracey Mann, a candidate running for Congress from Kansas in 2010, stated at a candidate forum that Obama should release his birth certificate to resolve the issue. In a radio interview, he said: "I think the president of the United States needs to come forth with his papers and show everyone that he's an American citizen and put this issue to bed once and for all." In response, on July 21, 2010, ''The Hutchinson News'', a local paper in Hutchinson, Kansas, withdrew their endorsement of Mann, saying that Mann "questions the citizenship of President Barack Obama despite evidence that is irrefutable to most objective, rational peopleincluding a birth certificate released by the Hawaii secretary of state and birth announcements printed in Honolulu's two major newspapers". Mann responded that he was "disappointed and mystified" by the decision and that they had misunderstood his position, as he was "not interested in pursuing this issue in Congress" and had "never had any interest in spending any time on the matter". Mann was defeated in the Republican primary by state senator Tim Huelskamp.


David Vitter

At a townhall meeting in Metairie, Louisiana on July 11, 2010, Senator David Vitter said: "I personally don't have standing to bring litigation in court, but I support conservative legal organizations and others who would bring that to court. I think that is the valid and most possibly effective grounds to do it." His campaign provided no additional comments.


Newt Gingrich

On September 11, 2010, former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich stated that Obama could only be understood by people who "understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior". While Gingrich did not define this behavior, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs accused Gingrich of "trying to appeal to the fringe of people who don't believe the president was born in this country... You would normally expect better of somebody who held the position of Speaker of the House, but look, it is political season, and most people will say anything, and Newt Gingrich does that on a, genuinely, on a regular basis."


Andy Martin

In December 2010,
Andy Martin Anthony Robert Martin-Trigona, usually known as Andy Martin (born 1945) is an American perennial candidate who has never been elected to office, running as both a Democrat and a Republican. He is a vexatious litigant who has filed over 250 po ...
(plaintiff in ''Martin v. Lingle'' and self-described "King of the Birthers") announced his candidacy to seek the 2012 Republican nomination for the President of the United States. In February 2011, Martin's planned appearance at a Republican meeting in Deering, New Hampshire, was cancelled after his anti-Semitic past was discovered.


Mike Huckabee

On February 28, 2011, on Steve Malzberg's radio program Mike Huckabee, a 2008 candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, falsely claimed that Obama had been raised in Kenya and that "[Obama] probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather." Huckabee, speaking on ''The O'Reilly Factor'', said that he misspoke and intended to say Indonesia, characterizing his comment as a "verbal gaffe".


Michele Bachmann

In March 2011, Representative Michele Bachmann told conservative radio host Jeff Katz: "I'll tell you one thing, if I was ever to run for president of the United States, I think the first thing I would do in the first debate is offer my birth certificate, so we can get that off the table." Previously on ''Good Morning America'', when asked about Obama's origins, she replied, "Well, that isn't for me to state. That's for the president to state."


Mike Coffman

On May 12, 2012, Mike Coffman, a congressman running for re-election in the Sixth Congressional District of Colorado, addressed a Republican fundraising event in Elbert County, Colorado, Elbert County. Coffman stated that he did not know where Obama was born, and that Obama was "in his heart... just not an American." Coffman issued an apology on May 16, saying that he had misspoken and that he had confidence in Obama's citizenship and legitimacy as president. In a May 23 ''Denver Post'' op-ed piece, Coffman described his comment as "inappropriate and boneheaded".


Arizona electors

In December 2012, three of the eleven Electoral College (United States), electors from Arizona who cast their votes for Mitt Romney raised doubts about Obama's birthplace. One was the chair of the Republican Party of Arizona, Tom Morrissey. Morrissey later insisted that he was not a birther, but said he was not convinced the birth certificate produced by Obama was real.


Political impact

Although claims about Obama's citizenship were evaluated in 2008 by the John McCain 2008 presidential campaign, McCain campaign and ultimately rejected, they became a significant issue among sections of the political right. Activists unsuccessfully lobbied Republican members of Congress to reject the 2008 Electoral College vote and block Obama's election when it came before Congress for certification on January 8, 2009. By mid-2009, the natural born citizen issue was one of the hottest and most lucrative sources of fundraising for organizations on the right that raise funds through direct mail and telemarketing. Online petition sites such as that of
Alan Keyes Alan Lee Keyes (born August 7, 1950) is an American politician, political scientist, and perennial candidate who served as the Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs from 1985 to 1987. A member of the Republican P ...
, who has been collecting signatures on the birth certificate issue, are a major source for generating mailing lists of movement conservatives. The web site ''WorldNetDaily'' published more than 200 articles on the subject by July 2009 and has sold billboards, bumper stickers and postcards asking "Where's the birth certificate?" and similar slogans in an effort which has "already raised tens of thousands of dollars". Moderate conservatives soon found themselves "bombarded with birther stuff". Protesters at the Tea Party protests in 2009 carried signs about the birth certificate issue, some of which were recommended by protest organizers. In an incident that attracted widespread media coverage, moderate Republican Party (United States), Republican Representative Michael Castle was booed and heckled during a July 2009 town hall meeting in Georgetown, Delaware, when he told a woman protesting about Obama's birth certificate: "if you're referring to the president there, he is a citizen of the United States." NBC Nightly News reported that other members of Congress often hear the issue too; an anonymous congressman told the program that he was reluctant to advertise his own town hall meetings for fear of this issue drowning out everything else."Obama's Birthplace Still blog fodder"
, ''NBC Nightly News''. July 22, 2009.
A number of Republican legislators have United States presidential eligibility legislation, proposed legislation and constitutional amendments at the state and federal levels to address issues raised by the birth certificate campaigners. Some Republicans are said to "want the issue to go away", seeing it as a distraction. Democratic Party (United States), Democratic commentators have criticized the reluctance of some Republicans to distance themselves from the proponents of the conspiracy theories, suggesting that "Republican officials are reluctant to denounce the birthers for fear of alienating an energetic part of their party's base." NBC News' "First Read" team commented: "the real story in all of this is that Republican Party has a HUGE problem with its base right now." Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele released a statement through his spokesperson saying, "Chairman Steele believes that this is an unnecessary distraction and believes that the president is a U.S. citizen." Political analyst Marc Ambinder of ''The Atlantic'' and ''CBS News'' suggests this phenomenon goes to the heart of the dilemma now facing the Republican Party, positing that Political analyst Andrew Sullivan, writing in ''The Sunday Times'', stated On July 27, 2009, the House of Representatives passed a resolution commemorating the 50th anniversary of Hawaii's statehood. The resolution, containing language recognizing Hawaii as President Obama's birth state, passed by a vote of 378–0.


Opinion surveys

In October 2008, the ''Orange County Register'''s OC Political Pulse poll found that a third of responding Republicans believed that Obama had been born outside the United States. As a result of the widespread publicity given to the citizenship controversy, 60% of respondents in an Ohio State University survey carried out in November 2008 had heard of the issue. However, only 10% believed the claims that Obama was not a citizen. A Public Policy Polling survey carried out in August 2009 found that 32% of Republicans in Virginia thought that Obama was born in the U.S., 41% thought he was foreign-born and the remaining 27% were unsure. In Utah, an August 2009 poll carried out for the ''Deseret News'' and KSL-TV found that 67% of Utahns accepted the evidence that Obama was born in the U.S. The poll found that those who do not believe that Obama was born in the United States, or do not know, are predominantly middle-aged, lower-income Republican-leaning individuals without a college education. A Pew Research Center poll found that 80% of Americans had heard about the Obama citizenship claims by August 2009. The poll found a significant partisan divide in views of the news coverage, with 58% of Democrats saying that the allegations had received too much attention from the media. Republicans were more inclined to say that the allegations had received too little attention, with 39% expressing this view against only 26% saying that the controversy had received too much attention. In a Harris Poll online survey of 2,320 adults conducted in March 2010, 25% of the respondents said they believed that Obama was "not born in the United States and so is not eligible to be president".Wingnuts' and President Obama"
, Harris Polls, March 24, 2010. Retrieved July 18, 2010
In a July 2010 CNN poll of adult Americans, 16% said they had doubts that Obama was born in the United States, and a further 11% were certain that he was not. The percentage of doubters plummeted after President Obama released the long form certificate in April 2011. A The Gallup Organization, Gallup telephone poll of 1018 adults conducted in May 2011 found that 5% of respondents believed that Obama was "definitely born in another country" and 8% believed he was "probably born in another country", versus 47% believing he was "definitely" and 18% "probably" born in the US. Broken down by political affiliation, the same poll found that 23% of self-identified Republicans, 14% of independents, and 5% of Democrats thought Obama was definitely or probably born in another country. In July 2016, four months before Donald Trump was elected to the presidency, 41 percent of Republicans disagreed that Obama was born in the United States and 31 percent neither agreed nor disagreed, per an NBC poll. A 2015 study found that among individuals who held birther views, they were predominantly conservative/Republican and held anti-Black attitudes. A 2019 study found that "among white Americans, birther beliefs are uniquely associated with racial animus."


Dilemma for Republicans

Because a portion of Republican voters and their Tea Party movement, Tea Party supporters believed Obama was not eligible to hold public office (see Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories#Opinion surveys, Opinion surveys section), Republicans sometimes found themselves caught in a dilemma between losing support or damaging their credibility. They had "to walk the fine line of humoring conspiracy-minded supporters without explicitly questioning Obama's legitimacy..." Other Republicans, including former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, however, have plainly rejected these claims. An example of these situations was Michael Castle, then Representative for Delaware, who ran in 2010 for the Senate seat vacated by Vice President Joe Biden. At a town hall meeting, Castle was confronted by constituents who jeered him for insisting that Obama is a citizen of the United States. Castle, one of the leading Republican moderates in the House, was later defeated by Tea Party movement, Tea Party-backed Christine O'Donnell in the Republican primary, who herself later lost the United States Senate special election in Delaware, 2010, general election to Democratic nominee Chris Coons.


Commentary and criticism

Proponents of claims doubting Obama's eligibility have been dubbed "birthers" by their critics, who have drawn a parallel with 9/11 Truth Movement, 9/11 conspiracy theorists or "truthers". Leslie Savan of ''The Nation'' has compared the so-called "birthers" to other groups as well, including those who Moon landing conspiracy theories, deny the Moon landing, the Holocaust denial, Holocaust or Climate change denial, global warming, Sovereign citizen movement, "Teabaggers who refuse to believe they must pay taxes" and Young Earth creationism, creationists who believe the earth is 6,000 years old. Historian Matthew Dallek compares birtherism to conspiracy theories promoted by the John Birch Society (JBS), such as the JBS belief that the civil rights movement was part of a massive, Communist conspiracy from abroad. Birthers, he argues, "unwittingly tapped this inheritance." MSNBC political commentator Rachel Maddow has defined a "birther" as: A number of conservative commentators have criticized its proponents and their effect on the wider conservative movement. Talk show host Michael Medved has also been critical, calling them "the worst enemy of the conservative movement" for making other conservatives "look sick, troubled and not suitable for civilized company". Conservative columnist Ann Coulter has referred to them as "just a few cranks". An editorial in the ''
Honolulu Star-Bulletin The ''Honolulu Star-Bulletin'' was a daily newspaper based in Honolulu, Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, United States. At the time publication ceased on June 6, 2010, it was the second largest daily newspaper in the state of Hawaii (after the ''Honol ...
'' dismissed the claims about Obama's eligibility as proposing "a vast conspiracy involving Obama's parents, state officials, the news media, the United States Secret Service, Secret Service, think-tanks and a host of yet-to-be-uncovered others who have connived since Obama's birth to build a false record so that he could eventually seek the presidency 47 years later." The ''St. Petersburg Times, St. Petersburg Times''' fact-checking website, PolitiFact, concluded its series of articles on the birth certificate issue by saying: In November 2008, commentator and social critic Camille Paglia criticized the "blathering, fanatical overkill" of the topic, but also questioned Obama's response: "Obama could have ended the entire matter months ago by publicly requesting Hawaii to issue a fresh, long-form, stamped certificate and inviting a few high-profile reporters in to examine the document and photograph it," she said.Paglia, Camille (November 12, 2008)
"Obama surfs through,"
''Salon''.
A parenthetical in the same article noted that "the campaign did make the 'short-form' certificate available to Factcheck.org." Factcheck.org noted, "The Hawaii Department of Health's birth record request form does not give the option to request a photocopy of your long-form birth certificate, but their short form has enough information to be acceptable to the State Department." Writing in December 2008, Alex Koppelman discussed the validity of the common argumentthat Obama should release a copy of his full, original certificate and the rumors and doubts would disappear. Conspiracy theory experts told Koppelman that when committed conspiracists are presented with more data debunking their theory, they refuse to accept the new evidence. "Whatever can't be ignored can be twisted to fit into the narrative; every new disclosure of something that should, by rights, end the controversy only opens up new questions, identifies new plotters," he wrote. Because Obama's release of the short-form had only "stoked the fever of conspiracy mongers", Koppelman predicted that releasing the long-form certificate "would almost certainly" continue the rumor cycle. In response to the notion that Obama's grandparents might have planted a birth announcement in newspapers just so their grandson could some day be president, FactCheck suggested that "those who choose to go down that path should first equip themselves with a high-quality tinfoil hat." Brooks Jackson, the director of FactCheck, comments that "it all reflects a surge of paranoid distress among people who don't like Barack Obama" and who want the election results to go away. Chip Berlet, a journalist who has studied the spread of conspiracy theories, notes:
For some people, when their side loses an election, the only explanation that makes sense to themthat they can cope withis that sinister, bad, evil people arranged some kind of fraud.
American political writer Dana Milbank, writing for ''
The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'', described the Obama citizenship theories of Bob Schulz (chairman of the We the People Foundation, which in 2008 We the People Foundation#Disputing Obama's citizenship, publicly challenged Obama's citizenship) as "tales from the tinfoil-hat brigade". Colorado presidential elector Camilla Auger, responding to lobbying of members of the Electoral College (United States), Electoral College, commented: "I was concerned that there are that many nutty people in the country making depressing, absurd allegations." Some commentators have asserted that racism is a factor motivating the promotion of Obama citizenship conspiracy theories. J. Richard Cohen, the President of the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that monitors hate groups and extremism, wrote an e-mail to supporters in July 2009 declaring: "This conspiracy theory was concocted by an anti-Semite and circulated by racist extremists who cannot accept the fact that a black man has been elected president." An academic psychologist commented that a study published in the ''Journal of Experimental Social Psychology'' supported a conclusion that racism has played a role. Donald Trump's questioning how Obama gained admission to two Ivy-League institutions, as well as his comment, "I have a great relationship with the blacks", led David Remnick, David Letterman and Bill Maher, among others, to accuse Trump of racism, and an increased attention on race with respect to Obama. In April 2011, Marilyn Davenport, a Tea Party activist and member of the executive committee of the Republican Party's local Orange County, California, organization, created a nationwide controversy when she circulated a photograph by email, widely seen as racist, that had been edited to depict Barack Obama as the child of two chimpanzees, and to which she had added the caption, "Now you know why no birth certificate". Following the release of Obama's long-form certificate later that month, ''The New York Times'' remarked in an editorial that, "It is inconceivable that this campaign to portray Mr. Obama as the insidious 'other' would have been conducted against a white president."


Legislation and litigation

The controversy over Obama's citizenship and eligibility for the presidency prompted a number of Republican state and federal legislators to propose legislation aimed at requiring future presidential candidates to release copies of their birth certificates. Some legislators also lent their support to birth certificate-related litigation against Obama, joining as co-plaintiffs. Although Obama was confirmed as president-elect by Congress on January 8, 2009, and sworn in as President on January 20, litigation continued into his presidency. Numerous individuals and groups filed state or federal lawsuits seeking to have Obama disqualified from standing or being confirmed for the Presidency, or to compel him to release additional documentation relating to his citizenship. By mid-December 2008, at least 17 lawsuits had been filed challenging Obama's eligibility in states including North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Hawaii, Connecticut, New Jersey, Texas and Washington.Holmes, Jamie (October 23, 2008). "Obama citizenship questions continue", ''WPTV'' (West Palm Beach, Florida). No such suit resulted in the grant of any relief to the plaintiffs by any court; all of the cases were rejected in lower courts. Three post-election suits were dismissed by the Supreme Court of the United States. In April 2011, the Arizona legislature became the first to pass a bill "requiring President Obama and other presidential candidates to prove their U.S. citizenship before their names can appear on the state's ballot". The bill, HB 2177, was vetoed by Governor Jan Brewer on April 18. Obama is not the first President to be the subject of controversy surrounding the location of his birth. Andrew Jackson was the subject of similar claims, although it is not certain that they were raised during his presidency. Some said that Chester A. Arthur was born outside the United States, with his birth records later allegedly falsified to show he was born in Vermont.


Impact on the 2012 presidential election and beyond

In May 2012, the Arizona Secretary of State, Ken Bennett, asked Hawaii to verify Obama's Hawaiian birth to ensure his eligibility to appear on the November ballot. After Bennett proved that he needed the information as part of the regular course of official business, Hawaii officially confirmed that the information in the copy of the Certificate of Live Birth for the President matches the original record in their files. Later the same month, the Mississippi state Democratic Party requested Hawaii to verify that the long-form image on the White House website matched the copy on file, and they were provided with a certified verification, bearing the state seal and signed by state registrar Alvin T. Onaka, who had certified both released birth certificates. In September 2012, the State Objections Board of Kansas, composed of "three of the state's top elected Republicans", delayed acting on a petition to remove Barack Obama's name from the ballot, requesting information from Hawaii regarding his birth certificate; however, they later voted unanimously to accept Obama's citizenship and retain him on the state's ballot, despite objections from the floor by
Orly Taitz Orly Taitz (; born August 30, 1960) is an Israeli-American political conspiracy theorist and political candidate. A dentist, lawyer, and former real estate agent, Taitz was a figure in the "birther" movement, which promoted the conspiracy the ...
.


White House responses

A common claim among those arguing that President Obama was not born in Hawaii is that all doubt would be settled if Obama released his "long form" birth certificate. However, commentators noted that doing so would be disadvantageous to Obama. First, it would encourage speculation as to why it took so long to release the document. Second, caving in to his political adversaries' demands would embolden them by giving them a victory. Finally, it would open the door to demands for other personal records unrelated to his birth certificate. Despite these concerns, both Obama and his press secretary have responded to reporters' questions about the issue.


Press secretary's response

At the end of the May 27, 2009, news conference, press briefing, ''WorldNetDaily'' reporter Lester Kinsolving asked about Obama's birth certificate. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs replied "It's on the Internet", to which Kinsolving responded "No, no, nothe long form listing his hospital and physician". Gibbs responded as follows: At a July 27, 2009, press briefing, radio talk show host Bill Press asked Gibbs if there was anything he could say to make the issue go away. Gibbs answered, "No. I mean, the God's honest truth is no," because "nothing will assuage" those who continue to pursue what he called "made-up, fictional nonsense" despite the evidence that Obama had already provided. On August 6, 2009, Gibbs commented, "You couldn't sell this script in Hollywood," and summarized the contentions that he considered "totally crazy":


Barack Obama's response

At the February 2010 National Prayer Breakfast, Obama commented, "Surely you can question my policies without questioning my faith. Or for that matter my citizenship." He directly addressed the issue in August 2010, in an interview with Brian Williams. Williams asked Obama about the fact that a fifth of the American people do not believe that he is either American born or a Christian. Obama responded that "there is a mechanism, a network of misinformation that in a new media era can get churned out there constantly." He then added, "I can't spend all my time with my birth certificate plastered on my forehead." In an April 2011 interview with George Stephanopoulos, Obama said, "I think that over the last two and a half years there's been an effort to go at me in a way that is politically expedient in the short-term for Republicans, but creates, I think a problem for them when they want to actually run in a general election where most people feel pretty confident the President was born where he says he was, in Hawaii. He doesn't have horns. We may disagree with him on some issues and we may wish that you know, the unemployment rate was coming down faster and we want him to know his plan on gas prices. But we're not really worrying about conspiracy theories or... birth certificates. And so... I think it presents a problem for them." On April 27, 2011, referring to "sideshows and carnival barkers", Obama appeared in the White House press room an hour after the release of the long form and said, "I know there is going to be a segment of people for which no matter what we put out this issue will not be put to rest. But I am speaking to the vast majority of the American people, as well as to the press. We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We've got better stuff to do."


Joking acknowledgements

On several occasions, Obama joked about the conspiracy theories surrounding his birth certificate and citizenship. At the 2010 White House Correspondents' Association, White House Correspondents' Dinner, Obama said there are few things in life harder to find and more important to keep than love, and then added, "Well, love and a birth certificate." At the 2011 Gridiron Dinner, Obama referred to Bruce Springsteen's song, "Born in the U.S.A. (song), Born in the U.S.A.", and commented, "Some things just bear repeating." On March 17, 2011 (Saint Patrick's Day), Obama said, "Now, speaking of ancestry, there has been some controversy about my own background. Two years into my presidency, some are still bent on peddling rumors about my origins. So today, I want to put all those rumors to rest. It is true my great-great-great-grandfather really was from Ireland. It's true. Moneygall, to be precise. I can't believe I have to keep pointing this out." At the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner, following the release of his long-form Hawaiian birth certificate, Obama declared that he would "go a step further" and release his "official birth video"—actually a clip from the opening of ''The Lion King'' (1994) where Simba is born in the African savanna—after which he defeatedly remarked, "Oh well. Back to square one." He then clarified "to the Fox News table" that he was indeed joking, and that they could contact Disney for the "original long-form version". Later in 2011, Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2012, Obama's re-election campaign offered for sale mugs with a picture of Obama (captioned "Made in the USA") and the image of the birth certificate. The campaign states, "There's really no way to make the conspiracy about President Obama's birth certificate completely go away, so we might as well laugh at itand make sure as many people as possible are in on the joke." On January 17, 2012, during a televised tribute to actress Betty White on her 90th birthday, Obama taped a segment in which he wrote White a letter saying that, given her appearance and vitality, he not only could not believe she was 90, he ''did not'' believe her, and requested to see her birth certificate.


See also

* Early life and career of Barack Obama * Barack Obama religion conspiracy theories * Birthright citizenship in the United States * Chester A. Arthur#Birth and family, Chester A. Arthur * Security paper * ''Where's the Birth Certificate?'' * ''Dreams from My Real Father


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Obama citizenship conspiracy theories Articles containing video clips Birthplaces, Obama Conspiracy theories involving presidents of the United States Conspiracy theories regarding Barack Obama, Citizenship conspiracy theories Conspiracy theories promoted by Donald Trump Presidency of Barack Obama Citizenship of the United States Civil registration and vital statistics Anti-black racism in the United States Xenophobia