Trump's ex-campaign chief uses CNN perch to go full birther on President Obama

By Rafi Schwartz  |  August 3, 2016 | 3:16pm
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On Tuesday evening, during a taping of “CNN Tonight with Don Lemon”, ousted Trump campaign manager-turned-embarrassing media hire Corey Lewandowski revived the long-discredited charge (perpetuated most infamously by Trump himself) that President Barack Obama is not, in fact, an American citizen.

Yup, he went full-blown birther.

The remarks by Lewandowski—who has been nothing but an enthusiastic Trump booster since joining CNN as a commentator earlier this year—came as a part of a rapid-fire exchange with fellow CNN commentator Angela Rye (she of epic eye-roll fame) over President Obama’s calling Trump “unfit” for the presidency during a press conference on Tuesday. As Rye pointed out, Trump has long engaged in wildly inappropriate attacks on the president, including spearheading calls for Obama to produce various forms of documentation such as his birth certificate and college paperwork.

“Did he ever release his transcripts from Harvard?” Lewandowski asked, to Rye’s disbelief.

He then went in for the birther-y kill: “The question was did he get in as a U.S. citizen or was he brought into Harvard University as a citizen who wasn’t from this country?”

“Whooooa, no no no no no no no” panelist Bakari Sellers could be heard exclaiming, off-camera.

Later, Lewandowski conceded that Obama was from Hawaii. “Hawaii is in the country!” Rye laughed.

As ridiculous as Lewandowski’s claims may seem, he is merely returning to the well-worn territory made famous by his former boss during Trump’s flirtation with running in the 2012 election.

Birtherism from the Trump camp is nothing new, and Lewandowski’s revival of it really shouldn’t come as a surprise.

 
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