http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/donald-trumps-birther-strategy-120504
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Soon President Barack Obama and Donald Trump will be half a world away from each other. The president will be in Africa, where his trip is taking him to the country where his father was born. Trump, meanwhile, will still be in the first weeks of a presidential campaign that has rendered the most basic assumptions about the Republican primary temporarily inoperative.
However far apart the two men are, their two journeys are linked in significant ways. In the minds of millions of Americans (if polls are right), Barack Obama is actually returning to the country in which he was born—a “fact” he, his parents and the entire Hawaiian public health system have fiendishly hidden from the world for half a century. Those suspicions were fanned greatly by the comments of Donald Trump stretching back more than three years, comments that had no basis in fact, and for which Trump has offered neither explanation nor apology. Back in 2011, Trump trumpeted that he had sent investigators to Hawaii and that “they cannot believe what they’re finding.” We never did learn what it is they had found. A few weeks ago, asked about whether he thought Obama was born in the United States, Trump told CNN, “I don't know. I really don’t know.”
For his part, Obama has usually resorted to humor to reply. The two men even faced each other at the 2011 White House Correspondents Association dinner, where Obama skewered Trump from the podium for his “birther” stance, saying, “I know he’s taken some flak lately, but no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald,” Obama told the crowd. “And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like: Did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?” Two years ago, he told the same dinner about plans for his library: “Some have suggested that we put it in my birthplace but I’d rather keep it in the United States.”
The baseless notion that Obama is not really “one of us” is not confined to questions of birth. It is also linked to a broader notion that in countless ways, the president is not really “one of us.” For ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Obama’s worldview is explained as “Kenyan anti-colonial behavior.” For FOX’s Sean Hannity, Obama is “the Manchurian candidate,” whose (perhaps unconscious) attraction to America’s enemies was shaped by ties to onetime Weather Underground bomber Bill Ayres and his longtime pastor, Jeremiah Wright. For former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the conclusion is clear: “I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America,” he said in February. “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”
If these are the public views of some of the more prominent voices on the Right, it’s no surprise that a majority of Republicans believe that “deep down, Obama is a Muslim,” or that a significant chunk of Republicans think it’s likely that Obama is not a citizen.
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