General Discussion

Tommy_Carcetti

(43,182 posts) Thu May 11, 2017, 09:22 AM May 2017

Remember when Trump held that press conference at his hotel regarding Obama's birth certificate?

First, he perpetuated the false claim that it was Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign who had started the birther conspiracy.

Then he rode in his white horse and announced to all the world he was defending the honor of legitimately American born President Barack Obama.

This was his exact quote:

Now, not to mention her in the same breath, but Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it. I finished it. You know what I mean. President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.

http://time.com/4497626/donald-trump-birther-address-transcript/

After that, he led reporters on a tour of his yet-to-open DC Hotel (only after kicking a few out of the press pool).

No one in their right mind believed either at the time, before, or afterwards that Donald Trump "finished" the birther conspiracy. In fact, there's arguably no other figure more responsible for propagating the false narrative to the public than Donald Trump himself. For years he harped on and on about it, claiming he was out to investigate the issue and promising that he'd reveal leads which never actually materialized. And he continued this long after President Obama actually decided to release all forms of his birth certificate to the public. He continued to perpetuate those lies.

But it didn't stop him in September 2016 of claiming that poor President Obama was being persecuted by mean Hillary Clinton and that he'd heroically step in and save the day. It didn't matter that this was essentially the 180 degree opposite of the actual truth. It didn't matter that no one actually believed him. He framed the narrative the way he wanted to frame it and he got off on that fact.

Now, the good news for Secretary Clinton is that now she's the beneficiary of Trump's white horse heroics. Because he's the one who fired that dastardly Jim Comey for screwing things up for her during the 2016 campaign. Even though he cheered Comey's actions as they took place, it doesn't matter. So in Trump's mind, we should all be grateful to him.

Again, no one in their right mind believes Trump's narrative here. It's a total insult to our collective intelligence to claim that the reason he fired Jim Comey was for his errors concerning Hillary Clinton during the campaign, and not the fact he was breathing down Trump's neck regarding the Russia investigation and refused to bend over and be Trump's patsy.

But I have a feeling he's not expecting us to believe it. He knows that we know it's bullshit. But he gets off nonetheless in shoveling us bullshit, because that's just his personality.