Birther apology wanted
REUTERS WASHINGTON Black voters have reacted skeptically to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s admission that he now believes the nation’s first black president was indeed born in the United States, with many saying the fact that Trump spent years questioning Barack Obama’s national origin was disrespectful and an insult to all AfricanAmericans.
Despite the fact that Obama himself said he viewed the renewed burst of commentary about his birth as ‘‘fairly typical’’ and not surprising, members of the Congressional Black Caucus are clearly angry.
During a heated news confer- ence yesterday at the caucus’s annual conference in Washington, DC, several lawmakers denigrated Trump for perpetrating ‘‘birther’’ falsehoods for so long.
‘‘He owes an apology to President Barack Obama, he owes an apology to African-American community, and he owes an apology to the United States of America,’’ said Hakeem Jeffries, adding that he considered Trump to be ‘‘nothing but a two-bit racial arsonist’’.
Fellow Democrats Sheila Jackson Lee and G K Butterfield called Trump a ‘‘cheap racist’’ and a ‘‘disgusting fraud’’ respectively.
Many African-Americans gave Trump no credit for finally letting go of the long-dispelled notion that Obama, who was born in Hawaii in 1961, actually hailed from outside the country he now leads. They said they believed it was some sort of political calculation by Trump, aimed at getting votes from African-Americans or moderate whites.
‘‘In the black community, it’s always been viewed as kind of offhanded racism,’’ said Preston Thymes, a Scottsdale, Arizona marketing manager.
Roosevelt Brown, 56, a special investigator in California, said he felt that African-American voters weren’t buying Trump’s aboutface. ‘‘I don’t believe in his heart he’s saying what he believes.’’
‘‘He’s a backtracker,’’ said Bailey Billings, 25, of Madison, Wisconsin.
‘‘He says whatever he thinks he should say, what he’s directed by his team to say, to make him seem like a better human that we should all vote for.
‘‘I just don’t care for anything that he says.’’
Trump’s attempt to pull Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton into the fray, by claiming that she endorsed birther tactics against Obama during their 2008 nomination race, didn’t sit well with some African-American voters either. really
‘‘He’s a big liar, and he’s just trying to put people against Hillary,’’ said Wilma Brown, a 66-year-old Detroit housewife.
Trump’s political rise was fuelled in part by his presence among birthers. As recently as this week, he declined to say where he believed Obama was born.
Rufus Bartell, a Detroit businessman and founder of a retail and consulting group, said there had been too much damage for Trump to make up with many African-American voters, who have been a powerful voting bloc during Obama’s time in Washington. AP