SHEPARD SMITH (HOST): Remember the TV show Punk'd? Remember it? Ashton Kutcher would set up elaborate pranks of celebrities as the cameras rolled, it was pretty funny, really.
Today Donald Trump punked the media and we learned it's not as fun when you're the victim. Here's what happened. Donald Trump's campaign announced that he would be holding a news conference, his first news conference on any matter in two months. this one on his past statements about the president not being born in America, statements that were never true.
He made them for years, but instead of the promised news conference, he did an eight minute live commercial on all channels for his new hotel in Washington, then brought out American heroes to extol his greatness, then said the first black President of the United States really is an America citizen, gave no explanation for his previous statements to the contrary, or the reason for the change in position, then said Hillary Clinton started it, which she did not.
Again, he blamed Hillary Clinton for creating the birther conspiracy theory. She did not. The comments came from that new hotel of his, just blocks away from the White House. Not only did Trump admit that President Obama was born in the U.S. -- thanks for that -- he also took credit for resolving the issue that never was. Apparently forcing President Obama to release his birth certificate back in 2011, stating that he was obviously born in Hawaii.
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SMITH: There is no evidence to support the claim that Hillary Clinton or her team started the theory that President Obama wasn't born in America. Zero, it never happened. Yet this is not the first time Donald Trump has accused the Clinton camp of exactly this, even though fact-checkers have debunked the claim, including the Washington Post, Politifact, and Factcheck.org.
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SMITH: Obviously Clinton's team came out to set the record straight. She did not start the birther rumor, in fact Hillary Clinton has attempted to point out that Donald Trump's refusal to admit that President Obama was born in United States is a sign that the Republican nominee is not connected with black voters, which he isn't. Of course, that's because the birther issue, illegitimate by any issue as a definition, questioned the legitimacy of our nation's first black president and gives fuels to the “He's not one of us” lies.
Reporters on hand presume this was Trump's attempt to put the birther issue behind him. So far, that has not happened.
