There’s exactly zero evidence linking Hillary Clinton to the patently false “birther” claim that President Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States. This theory has been disproven, debunked and fact-checked into oblivion, but people like Donald Trump don’t seem to listen.
That list of disbelievers now includes Fox News host Greg Gutfeld, who brought up birtherism on Thursday’s edition of “The Five.” The panel discussed a slew of mudslinging between the two leading presidential nominees this week, which has included allegations of bigotry, mentions of white supremacy and an ongoing back-and-forth about Trump’s immigration plan.
Gutfeld began by saying that neither candidate is racist (”we’re just in a really stupid election”) before jumping into a brief rant about Clinton mentioning the controversy during a rally in Reno, Nevada, on Thursday.
“Hillary hit him on birtherism,” Gutfeld said, before questioning: “Didn’t she kind of start that when she was running against Obama?”
His comments start around the 6:30 mark in the video below.
The answer to that bogus accusation is no.
Some of Clinton’s supporters during her 2008 presidential campaign were linked to the genesis of birtherism. But reporter Byron Tau, who wrote about the issue while working for Politico in 2011, told FactCheck.org, “We never found any links between the Clinton campaign and the rumors.”
No one has connected the Clinton campaign to such allegations, and Trump, at times an ardent birther, has provided no proof that the former secretary of state had anything to do with them.
Clinton was sure to mention Trump’s birtherism ties during her Reno rally.
“Let’s not forget Trump first gained political prominence leading the charge for the so-called ‘birthers,’” she said. “He promoted the racist lie that President Obama isn’t really an American citizen ― part of a sustained effort to delegitimize America’s first black president.”
Editor’s note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims ― 1.6 billion members of an entire religion ― from entering the U.S.
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