Trump admits Obama born in U.S.

Blames Clinton campaign for controversy

WASHINGTON • After five years as the chief promoter of the false idea that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States, Donald Trump reversed course and admitted on Friday that the president was — and then claimed credit for putting the issue to rest.

“President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period,” Trump said in a brief statement read at the end of a campaign appearance. “Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”

But as Trump sought to put the false conspiracy theory to rest, he stoked another, claiming that the “birther movement” was started by rival Hillary Clinton. There is no evidence that that is true.

“Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it,” Trump said. “I finished it, you know what I mean.”

While the birther theory was pushed by some bloggers who backed Clinton’s primary campaign against Obama eight years ago, the Democratic presidential candidate has long denounced what she’s called a “racist lie” that sought to “delegitimize America’s first black president.”

“Leading the birther movement is deplorable,” Clinton tweeted after Trump’s Friday event. “Attempting to say it ‘did a great service’ to the president who Trump attacked is asinine.”

For years, Trump has been the most prominent proponent of the “birther” idea. He used the issue to build his political profile and define his status as an “outsider.”

As late as Wednesday, Trump refused to acknowledge Obama was born in Hawaii, declining to address the matter in a Washington Post interview published late Thursday night.

Clinton seized on Trump’s refusal during a speech Thursday night.

“This man wants to be our next president? When will he stop this ugliness, this bigotry?” she asked.

Obama released his longform birth certificate in 2011, amid persistent questions from Trump.

The president said on Friday that he hoped the election would focus on more serious issues, and that he “was pretty confident about where I was born.”