Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., wasted no time Tuesday evening at the vice presidential debate with Indiana Gov. Mike Pence going after Donald Trump’s embrace of conspiracy theories alleging President Obama wasn’t born in America.
“[Trump] has pursued the discredited and really outrageous lie that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States,” the Virginia lawmaker said at the outset of the debate, which was held at Longwood University in Farmville, Va.
“It is so painful to suggest that we go back to think about these days where an African-American could not be a citizen of the United States,” Kaine said. “And I can’t imagine how Gov. Pence can defend the insult-driven, selfish, me-first-style of Donald Trump.”
The senator added later in the debate that birtherism is an “outrageous and bigoted lie.”
Clinton, Kaine and their campaign surrogates have focused recently on Trump’s embracing of birtherism, arguing at length that conspiracies alleging the president was born in Kenya are motivated entirely by racism.
“For five years, [Trump] has led the birther movement to delegitimize our first black president,” Clinton said last month at an address at the Black Women’s Agenda 39th Annual Symposium. “His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie. There is no erasing it in history. Barack Obama was born in America, plain and simple. And Donald Trump owes him and the American people an apology.
“Donald Trump looks at President Obama after eight years as our president. He still doesn’t see him as an American. Think of how dangerous that is. Imagine a person in the Oval Office who traffics in conspiracy theories and refuses to let them go no matter what the facts are,” she said.
Trump backed away from his embrace of birtherism during an address last month at his new hotel in Washington, D.C., and stated that he believes Obama was born in the United States.
However, the Clinton campaign said Trump’s attempt to disown the issue isn’t good enough, and the Democratic nominee and her team have kept after it at nearly every opportunity.
“It can’t be dismissed that easily. [Trump] really started his political activity based on this racist lie that our first black president was not an American citizen,” Clinton said last week during the first presidential debate.
First Lady Michelle Obama even got in on the game at a campaign rally on Sept. 28.
“There are those who question — and continue to question for the past eight years — whether my husband was even born in this country,” Obama said. “And let me say: Hurtful, deceitful questions deliberately designed to undermine his presidency. Questions that cannot be blamed on others or swept under the rug by an insincere sentence uttered at a press conference.”
“Let me take a moment,” she continued, “during his time in office, I think Barack has answered these questions with the example he set and the dignity he has shown by going high when they go low.”
Trump was asked why he flipped on his previous enthusiasm for birtherism, to which he responded, “Well I just wanted to get on with, I wanted to get on with the campaign. A lot of people were asking me questions.
