There are plenty of reasons why, after years of spreading the conspiracy theory, Donald Trump should not be given a pass after his sudden public disavowal of previous claims that President Obama was born in Kenya. However, the media are zeroing in on Trump’s assertion Hillary Clinton is responsible for starting birtherism. In fact, the Washington Post declared it categorically false in the lede of their story on Trump’s press conference this morning:
Not so fast. Just yesterday, James Asher, the former Washington bureau chief for the news agency McClatchy, tweeted that longtime Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal was spreading the conspiracy theory that Obama was born in Kenya while he was a senior Clinton campaign advisor in 2008, long before Trump ever parroted the claim:
That Blumenthal would have done this seems in keeping with what was reported about Blumenthal’s actions at the time:
Among the “fringe right-wing” attacks Blumenthal was sending out were actually from respectable conservative publications such as City Journal, National Review, and, yes, The Weekly Standard. This is more than a little ironic because Blumenthal is often credited with coining the phrase “vast right-wing conspiracy,” arguably the most famous phrase Hillary Clinton ever uttered.
But Blumenthal also dabbled spreading much less reliable reports, such as conjecture about Obama’s “communist mentor” Frank Marshall Davis. Further, Blumenthal’s reputation for dishonesty and underhanded tactics is well-established. It is generally accepted that he lied to the media and publicly smeared Monica Lewinsky and other Bill Clinton accusers when he worked in the White House. Christopher Hitchens, no card carrying member of the vast right-wing conspiracy, testified before Congress toBlumenthal’s lies and wrote a book about it.
When you combine the report Blumenthal was saying Obama was born in Kenya with the fact that Clinton campaign did circulate a memo outlining plans to attack Obama’s “lack of American roots,” it doesn’t seem far fetched that the Clinton campaign played a much bigger role in midwifing birtherism than they or the media would like to admit.
Clinton later tried to bring Blumenthal with her to the State Department (a plan the Obama administration nixed, probably at least in part because they were familiar with Blumenthal’s lengthy record of trashing Obama). She then put him on the payroll at the Clinton Foundation, and he was found in Clinton’s emails engaging with her as Secretary of State in an ultimately unsuccessful scheme to profiteer off of war-torn Libya as a result of his involvement with a private military company. Clinton and Blumenthal’s relationship is obviously close and has existed for decades. If the report Blumenthal was spreading birtherism in 2008 is accurate, it would be very hard for Clinton to evade some responsibility for the birther rumors getting out of control.
It is inarguable that Donald Trump deserves to be harshly judged for his outsized role in propagating the birther conspiracy—and several other conspiracies, such as the claim vaccines cause autism and that George W. Bush knowingly lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in order to start the war. But while the birther issue is also, like many other issues this year, one that if you examine it closely it ultimately highlights how both candidates are unfit for office.
UPDATE: In a new report this evening, McClatchy is not only confirming Asher’s story that Blumenthal was spreading the rumor Obama was born in Kenya, but that they sent a reporter to Kenya to follow-up on the matter. According to McClatchy‘s former bureau chief:
Blumenthal, in an email today to the Boston Globe, said Asher’s story is false, but again, Blumenthal does not have a reputation for honesty.
