When Donald Trump was finally forced to admit that President Barack Obama was indeed born in the USA, his pained concession came on a day honoring the very document that lets the president occupy the White House.
That’s right: The Republican nominee sought to end the questions about his long-held birther beliefs on Constitution Day, a little-known federal observance that celebrates the U.S. Constitution.
Trump may not be aware of the events honoring the rights of American citizens that are generally held at federal agencies and schools across the nation. Like most of his fellow Americans, he likely doesn’t remember that the nation’s founding document was signed on Sept. 17, 1787. (When the anniversary falls on a weekend, the holiday is observed on a nearby weekday.)
But the coincidence is striking ― an ironic day of reckoning for the country’s leading birther, who finally breaks with years of besmirching the legitimacy of Obama, a president who has always met the “natural born” requirement the Constitution demands of our chief executive.
There’s a long list of things Trump still doesn’t quite grasp about the Constitution ― about freedom of the press, the separation of powers, the promise of equality under the law. It’s possible he’ll never grasp them. When he was pressed about respecting the Constitution by the father of a Muslim American war hero, he didn’t listen ― he lashed out.
Most of this will not be a problem if Trump never becomes president; there’ll be no threat to the rule of law. But the damage is already done with his birther claims. After he spent years floating conspiracy theories about the birthplace of the first African-American president, Trump’s reversal will do nothing to convince those who simply won’t believe that Obama is who he says he is.
So let us see this Constitution Day for what it is: a day that began with a presidential nominee holding fast to his belief that the man who now occupies the White House shouldn’t be there.
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularlyincitespolitical violence and is a