September 16th, 2016
No matter what Donald Trump says now, the Republican nominee will not be able to undo what he has already wrought by questioning President Barack Obama’s U.S. citizenship, Hillary Clinton said Friday. And he owes both Obama and the American people an apology, she added.
“For five years, he has led the birther movement to delegitimize our first black president. His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie. There is no erasing it in history,” Clinton told an audience at the Black Women’s Agenda Symposium workshop in Washington. “Just yesterday, Trump, again, refused to say with his own words that the president was born in the United States.”
Clinton’s comments came minutes before Trump was scheduled to speak in the same city about Obama’s citizenship, which his campaign said in a statement Thursday night that he accepted. Trump himself declined to say earlier Friday whether he believes Obama was born in the U.S., teasing a forthcoming “major statement” on the matter.
“Now, Donald’s advisers have the temerity to say he’s doing the country a service by pushing these lies. No. He isn’t. He’s feeding into the worst impulses, the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country. Barack Obama was born in America, plain and simple. And Donald Trump owes him and the American people an apology,” Clinton said.
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