Hannity: Obama “Grew Up In Kenya”

On his Fox News show tonight, Sean Hannity responded to a guest's statement that birtherism is racially motivated by quickly proclaiming that birtherism “was never my issue.” He then launched into a defense of birtherism, condemning President Obama for letting the issue “drag on” and saying that the issue came up originally because Obama “says in his book he grew up in Kenya.”

There are several things wrong here. First off, Hannity's statement that Obama grew up in Kenya is completely false. In his memoir Dreams from My Father, Obama discussed a visit to Kenya in the 1980s, which was his first visit to the country. According to a 2008 BBC article, Obama has never lived in Kenya and had been there three times.

Fox News host Mike Huckabee faced a significant backlash earlier this year for making this same claim -- that Obama grew up in Kenya, an assertion that he later tried to walk back.

Second, Hannity may say that birtherism was never his issue, but throughout the spring, he repeatedly demanded that Obama release his long-form birth certificate and praised Donald Trump's focus on the issue.

Finally, Obama did not allow the debate to “drag on.” His campaign released a valid Hawaii birth certificate in 2008, long before Hannity's birther rampage this year.