Donald Trump has an explanation for why President Obama’s birth would be announced in a Hawaii newspaper if he wasn’t really born in the United States: His grandparents put it in as a ruse to make people think he was a U.S. citizen, “for hospitalization, for welfare, for this, for that, for all of the other assets you get from being a United States citizen.”
On CNN’s State Of The Union, Trump told Candy Crowley that he, and others, are not convinced by the birth announcement, published in the Honolulu Advertiser on Aug. 13, 1961, because “it was eight days later after the supposed birth.”
“A lot of things happen in eight days,” he said.
Trump continued:
The grandparents put that in because obviously they want him to be a United States citizen. Because in those days, I mean people were much more proud than they are today unfortunately for being a United States citizen. So they wanted him to be a citizen of the United States, for that purpose, and also for hospitalization, for welfare, for this, for that, for all of the other assets you get from being a United States citizen. So there are very smart people who say that’s routinely done and that was done by his grandparents.
Crowley, for her part, was not buying it: “I will tell you we’ve checked with both these papers early on” and “the fact is that the hospitals reported this information to the papers, and the papers printed it.”
“Who knows?” Trump replied. “You’re talking fifty years ago.”
Here’s the video — the birth announcement comments come in around 5:30:
h/t ThinkProgress.
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