US President Barack Obama has produced his detailed birth certificate from Hawaii, hoping to clamp off a resurrection of claims he was born outside the US and declaring the country did not have the “time for this kind of silliness.”
The timing of Obama’s nationally televised statement and release of the document coincided with persistent charges from potential Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump that the president had not proved he was born in the US. The US Constitution requires that the president not be foreign-born.
With next year’s presidential election 18 months away and Republicans and Democrats preparing for political battle over how to reduce the US debt, Obama said he did not want the country further distracted from those issues by continued public questions about where he was born.
Photo: Reuters
“I’ve got better stuff to do. We’ve got big problems to solve. And I’m confident we can solve them, but we’re going to have to focus on them — not on this,” Obama said in a statement in the White House press room.
Trump, meanwhile, spoke to reporters after stepping off a helicopter in a campaign-style stop in New Hampshire and congratulated himself as the only American to force Obama to release the so-called long-form birth certificate.
“He should have done it a long time ago. I am really honored to play such a big role in hopefully, hopefully getting rid of this issue,” Trump said.
Polls show large numbers of Republicans have continued to doubt Obama is a natural-born citizen and therefore eligible to be president. Trump, a bombastic real-estate mogul, had seized on the issue as he considers a Republican candidacy.
While Obama and White House officials avoided mentioning Trump by name, they said they released the certificate partially because the issue had moved beyond fringe discussion. Obama criticized a media culture that had not let the story go.
Recalling his speech two weeks ago that outlined his plan for reducing the US’ fast-expanding debt, Obama said that “during that entire week the dominant news story wasn’t about these huge, monumental choices that we’re going to have to make as a nation. It was about my birth certificate. And that was true on most of the news outlets that were represented here.”
Obama made public the shorter form of the state of Hawaii document before he was elected in 2008, proving his birthplace and constitutional eligibility to be president.
However, Trump gave new life to the issue when he joined Obama opponents who created the issue and said he had investigators in Hawaii digging out the circumstances surrounding Obama’s birth certificate.
White House counsel Bob Bower told reporters “the decision was made” early last week to look into asking Hawaii to waive its prohibition on releasing copies of the long-form document.
The request was made in a letter Obama signed on Friday. Obama’s lawyer Judy Corley flew to Hawaii to pick up certified copies of the document and returned with them on Tuesday.
The president’s frustrations over the “birther” issue showed in his Wednesday remarks.
“We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers,” Obama said.
The newly released certificate is signed by the delivery doctor, Obama’s mother and the local registrar.
His mother, then 18, signed her name (Stanley) Ann Dunham Obama.
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