Still Report #1195 – Who Did Start the Birther Theory?

from Bill Still

07:37 – Sept. 16, 2016 https://youtu.be/B1btCJF5qcI
Good evening, I’m still reporting on politics.
Today at the opening of Donald Trump’s new hotel in the Old Post Office building in Washington, D.C., Trump brought 44 new flag officers endorsing him, including more than a dozen of the 77 living Medal of Honor winners.
Trump, then made one very brief comment:
[insert]
On the CNN feed, this was followed by veteran CNN Chief National Correspondent John King with his propaganda slant to the Trump statement.
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This morning’s edition of the New York Times pounced on Trump as well:
“Trump Drops False ‘Birther’ Theory, but Floats a New One: Clinton Started It”
Well, the folks at the New York Times know this headline is a deliberate misrepresentation of the historical facts. Let’s go through them. First of all, Clinton MAY HAVE started the “birther” theory?
Thanks to one of my friends, I was sent this little clip of a Chris Matthews Dec. 18, 2007 edition of Hardball
[insert Sen. Kerry, Matthews, & Clinton quote]
Now with the preceding as context, here’s the important part. Here’s Chris Matthews again. The reason people haven’t picked this up before is he slurs over the one key word – born. Let’s see if you can pick it up the first time over it.
[insert – Matthews Open]
“But didn‘t Hillary dump on Obama a few days ago for playing up his Indonesian roots?

So, what is she up to here? Is she pushing how great he is for having been born in Indonesia, or what, or simply reminding everybody about his background, his Islamic background?”
Did you get it? Let’s run it again and I’ll throw up the key word as a caption. By the way, how do I know what Matthews said was the word “born”? Because that’s what the official NBC transcript of this show say it was.
[insert]
There you go, so somewhere in the early December period of 2007 – nearly 9 years ago – just months before the 2008 presidential primary voting got underway – Clinton and Obama were fighting for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Clinton was already pushing the “birther” issue then – years before it was actually even called that.

In fact, it was accepted as an everyday fact back then that Obama was not born in the U.S. Where Matthews got Indonesia instead of Kenya – who knows?
But there is more. Obama’s publisher of his book Dreams From My Father” in a promotional brochure listed Obama’s birthplace as Kenya until April 21, 2007, when that one fact was suddenly changed two months after Obama announced he was running for president.
But that’s not all. Late yesterday, Clinton tweeted out:
“President Obama’s successor cannot and will not be the man who led the racist birther movement. Period.”
But then at 6 minutes past midnight, James Asher, the former Washington bureau chief for McClatchy responded to Clinton’s tweet:
“So why did your man Sid Blumenthal spread the Obama birther rumor to me in 2008, asking us to investigate? Remember?”
Finally, this evening, I was sent the following video said to be relevant to this issue. There is zero attribution – no details as far as time or place goes. In the next few days, you may see this going viral because it’s been skillfully edited specifically to be pertinent to this topic.
After watching it many times on professional video editing equipment – despite the implausibility of it, just from a technical perspective, I think this is a fake.
[insert]
Notice there is a lot of background hiss. I think this has been added to cover the edits. Whenever Obama says the most incriminating words, either his back is turned, or you get a wide shot and with the poor resolution, you can’t tell how his lips are moving.
[Insert again]
This is the kind of stuff we have to deal with on a daily basis here. This fake implies a group of full-time, disinformation professionals. Why? Simply because no one with these sorts of skills would waste this much time on a project like this for no reason other than to humiliate smaller news outlets.
So just who did start the birther theory? It certainly wasn’t Trump. Was it Clinton’s opposition research team looking for an attack lane against Obama?
Or, despite this fake video – since there are still so many conflicting stories – nearly 10 years later – about Obama’s birthplace – was it Obama, himself?
Why would he do that? Because at different points in his positioning himself for a presidential run, he may have been trying to appeal to different voting blocs.
He finally settled on U.S. birth when this great Constitutional scholar realized that according to Article 2, Sec. 1 of the Constitution, no one who is not a natural born citizen is eligible to be President.
(More: see website)
http://www.billstill.com/
https://youtu.be/B1btCJF5qcI