Big news! This very morning, Donald Trump will reveal to you the truth about where President Barack Obama was born. But don't expect any spoilers.
Donald Trump passed up yet another opportunity to say he accepts the fact that President Barack Obama was born in the United States, promising to make a "major statement" on Friday morning in front of his latest hotel project and telling Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo, "We have to keep the suspense going, OK?
Yes. The suspense. That’s the important thing.
And don’t go trying to pry information from someone else in Clan Trump. They have no more idea what Don will say than they ever do.
Asked minutes earlier on "Good Morning America" whether his father would say so himself, Donald Trump Jr. responded, "I don't know." But he said that a statement issued late Thursday by Trump campaign aide Jason Miller "should be the definitive end of it.”
That’s the statement about the great favor that Donald Trump did for President Obama.
In 2011, Mr. Trump was finally able to bring this ugly incident to its conclusion by successfully compelling President Obama to release his birth certificate.
Junior Trump says that statement should settle things. So long as things isn’t his father saying the birth certificate was a fraud in 2012. And 2013. And … ever since.
But Trump doesn’t want to take all the credit for ending this “ugly incident” that he created, nurtured, fed, and tended like the eighteenth green at … whatever his golf course is called. Nope. He’s in a sharing mood.
Mr. Trump did a great service to the President and the country by bringing closure to the issue that Hillary Clinton and her team first raised.
Hillary Clinton started birtherism? Uhhh...
Bartiromo: I just don’t remember Hillary bringing it up? When did she bring it up during the campaign?
Trump: Hillary brought it up during the campaign. It was 2008 and it was brought up fairly well and she brought it up and I was the one that was successful in getting him to release his birth certificate.
Evidence? Citations? Those, what do you call ‘em … facts? Well Trump does have this in his statement.
Even the MSNBC show Morning Joe admits that it was Clinton’s henchmen who first raised this issue, not Donald J. Trump.
That would be the same Morning Joe hosted by "off the wall, a neurotic and not very bright mess” Mika and “clown” Joe, according to Trump. But a mess and a clown will do when you’re missing even a hint of truth in your accusation.
Still, Trump will make something up, and he’ll make it up quick. And he’ll be ready to deliver his news on just where your president was really born … Today! At his Brand. New. Hotel!
That’s right! This vital speech is in no way a publicity stunt designed to draw attention to Trump’s DC project, which is, also coincidentally, his only real construction deal in a decade. And all the build up to this opening of Don Trumpone’s vault is totally not one big lie heaped on another.
On Thursday night, Donald Trump finally acknowledged an obvious, proven fact: President Obama was born in the United States. Or, rather, Trump's campaign said that he acknowledged it, in a statement that was itself riddled with falsehoods.
"Hillary Clinton’s campaign first raised this issue to smear then-candidate Barack Obama in her very nasty, failed 2008 campaign for President," the statement begins. That's untrue — and it's been fact-checked any number of times. In 2011, Politico outlined the origins; in May, our fact checkers dubbed it ridiculous.
And as for the credit Donald Trump is claiming by solving this terrible problem …
"In 2011, Mr. Trump was finally able to bring this ugly incident to its conclusion by successfully compelling President Obama to release his birth certificate," it reads. "Mr. Trump did a great service to the President and the country by bringing closure to the issue that Hillary Clinton and her team first raised."
This is a remarkable pair of sentences. Terming the incident "ugly" and saying he's resolved it is a bit like a person intentionally running someone over, dumping them outside a hospital and then asking for a letter of commendation for wrapping things up so neatly.
Of course, people are only assuming that Donald Trump is going to say that President Obama was born in the United States. That may be what that statement from last night said, but someone may have sent Donald Trump a tweet since then and totally changed his mind.
And the suspense! We wouldn’t want to ruin the suspense.