Donald Trump: ‘Obama Was Born in the United States, Period’

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Donald Trump addressed the recent flareup of “birtherism” controversy on Friday at his brand new hotel in Washington, D.C., stating unequivocally that President Barack Obama was born in the United States.

“I finished it,” Trump declared, charging that Hillary Clinton started the birther controversy.

“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now, we all want to get back to making America strong and great again,” Trump declared on Friday morning.

Trump addressed the issue after a Washington Post article was published Thursday, questioning why he won’t acknowledge that Obama was born in the United States.

“Trump refused to say whether he believes Obama was born in Hawaii,” reported the Washington Post‘s Robert Costa.

“I’ll answer that question at the right time,” Trump told Costa. “I just don’t want to answer it yet.”

In 2011, President Obama publicly released his birth certificate from the state of Hawaii in response to public pressure from Trump. Reporters Mark Halperin and John Heilemann said in their book Double Down: Game Change 2012 that Obama was forced to look through his mother’s keepsakes to find the document. As reported by Breitbart News’ Matthew Boyle:

Halperin and Heilemann claim Obama literally spent that night in his Chicago home digging through old records to try to find some kind of proof he was born in Hawaii amid the belongings of his late mother, Ann Dunham.

After Obama made the fundraising rounds throughout Chicago, “he avoided mentioning Trump,” Halperin and Heilemann wrote, “yet the issue remained much on his mind.”

“What confounded him about the problem, beyond its absurdity, was that there was no ready solution,” they wrote. “Although Trump was braying for his original long-form birth certificate, officials in Obama’s home state were legally prohibited from releasing it on their own, and the president had no earthly idea where his family’s copy was.”