Donald Trump, who led efforts for years to question President Barack Obama’s birthplace, finally acknowledged Friday that Obama was born in the United States.
Trump, in his brief acknowledgment, tried to blame Hillary Clinton for starting the rumor in her 2008 primary campaign against her fellow Democrat.
"I finished it. I finished it," Trump said in brief remarks and refusing to take questions even as reporters shouted. "You know what I mean. President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period.”
He added “Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again. Thank you.”
Reporters - who had believed he would answer questions stood on chairs and shouted at Trump to answer why he believes that now -- and didn't as recently as two years ago.
Trump’s brief statement comes as Trump has sought to court African-American voters, who have been cool to his overtures.
He as recently as Wednesday night refused to say that he believed Obama was born in the United States, telling the Washington Post he would answer the question at the "right time."
His campaign late Thursday issued a statement after the Post story was published, with a spokesman saying that Trump now believes that Obama was born in the United States and that he had performed a "great service" to Obama and the country by "bringing closure to the issue." The statement also argued, against the facts, that Clinton and her campaign had first raised the issue.
Trump on Friday also sought to lay the blame for the birther controversy on Hillary Clinton, though fact checkers have repeatedly called the charge false. Although a Clinton supporter in 2008 circulated an email that questioned where Obama was born, independent fact checkers found there was no record that Clinton or anyone in her campaign ever advanced the charge that Obama was not born in the United States.
Clinton, appearing crosstown at The Black Women’s Agenda, decried Trump’s history as a birther, saying that for five years he led the push “to de-legitimize our first black president. His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie. There is no erasing it in history.”
“Barack Obama was born in America, plain and simple,” she said. “And Donald Trump owes him and the American people an apology.”