Hillary Clinton batted away allegations that her 2008 campaign helped eventually create the birther movement against Barack Obama, despite reports suggesting otherwise in recent days.
In an interview with CNN’s Don Lemon on “The Tom Joyner Morning Show” Wednesday, Clinton called the rumors “ludicrous” and “totally untrue.” Clinton’s defense comes after reports emerged earlier this week intimating that her team leaked the picture of President Obama in a headdress, stoking the conversation that he was secretly a Muslim.
“Do you care to respond?” Lemon asked Clinton. “Did you or your campaign start the whole birther thing? And did you have a confrontation with the president?”
“That is so — no,” Clinton said. “That’s so ludicrous, Don. You know, honestly, I just believe that — first of all, it’s totally untrue. And secondly, the president and I have never had any kind of confrontation like that.”
“You know, this is such a bad example of what’s wrong with instantaneous reactions and Americans getting all worked up and people feed prejudice and paranoia like Donald Trump,” Clinton said, pointing to Trump’s refusal to talk down an anti-Muslim question at a rally in New Hampshire last week. “Obviously, all of us have to stand against it.”
“I have been blamed for nearly everything. That was a new one to me,” she said. “I will just keep going and talking about what I want to do to get incomes rising and making college affordable and making all the positive changes that we have to be worried about.”
