SEPTEMBER 16, 2016
Photo: AP
Remember Emily Litella?
She was the old-lady character created by Gilda Radner on “Saturday Night Live” who was hard of hearing and then outraged by issues that she had misheard. When she was gently corrected by “Weekend Update” anchor Chevy Chase, she meekly turned to the camera and said “Never mind.”
It took approximately 90 seconds for Emily to get to “Never mind.”
It took Donald Trump five years.
In one of the most bizarre days of the campaign, Trump, who had steadfastly campaigned on his belief (or pose) that President Obama was not born in the United States, appeared on Fox Business Channel Friday morning and still refused to cop to the obvious fact that Obama was born in Hawaii.
Yet, only a few hours later, he was standing on a stage in his brand-new Washington, D.C. hotel, surrounded by military veterans and asserted, “President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period.”
Huh? Wha…?
Of course, Trump being Trump, he couldn’t leave it there and revealed just who was responsible for starting the birther movement. Who, you might ask? Well, Hillary Clinton, of course! (Lie #1) And it was Donald Trump who brought this terrible birther movement to an end in 2011. (A big Lie #2)
Who knows what goes on in the mind of Donald Trump? He could take it back all tomorrow and deny he ever said it. But birtherism was the one issue that first brought Trump into the political spotlight and seemed designed to appeal to the fringe voters of the Republican right. Will there be a political price to pay with them for abandoning what seemed to everyone to be his core principle?
It’s a risk, but I suspect that most voters intending to vote for Trump will support him no matter what. (There will likely be a lot of “I know he said it, but he really didn’t mean it” kind of rationalizing in Red State America tonight.) Still the question remains, “Why now?”
The birther question had seemed to have gone away from the 2016 campaign, and on the rare occasions that it has been asked by reporters, Trump usually flicked it away with “I don’t talk about that any more.” But in a widely-read interview with The Washington Post published Wednesday night, his answer was a little different:
“I’ll answer that question at the right time,” Trump said. “I just don’t want to answer it yet.”
The Post had headlined the story “Trump Tells Post He is Unwilling To Say Obama Was Born in the U.S.,” and the Democrats suddenly smelled an opening. When Hillary Clinton, who to that point had had a terrible week with illness and falling polls, returned to the campaign trail, she came roaring back and hit Trump hard on his statement, with an especially pointed “He doesn’t [even] believe the President was born…in America!“, which was met with rousing cheers.
Something must have clicked about her speech in Trump World because his campaign hurriedly put out a press release Thursday night stating that the Trump campaign believes that President Obama was born in America. News commentators quickly pounced with several variations of “If the campaign really believes it, why doesn’t the candidate actually come out and say it?” Hence, the big show today.
But the big Trump announcement did manage to do something that no Trump event had ever before done — it really pissed off the media. Trump teased his big announcement, so all of the networks covered it, but they waited and waited for him for him say the words. But instead Trump used up valuable airtime to talk about his fabulous new hotel and then invited the veterans to speak about how fabulous Trump is. Only at the very end did Trump utter those ten words about Obama for which everyone had been waiting.
From watching the reactions on-air, the news networks felt used and duped. The most intense on-air vitriol against Trump’s stunt actually came from anchors who would rarely criticize Trump. CNN’s John King said “We were played,” and CNN’s Ashleigh Banfield described Trump’s previous position as “that birther crap.” The animosity was so strong that I suspect it won’t be long before we begin to hear them utter the really-forbidden “L word” that TV journalists never use.
Liar.
