Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories

Some political opponents, especially in the Republican Party, expressed skepticism about Obama's citizenship or were unwilling to acknowledge it; others proposed legislation that would require presidential candidates to provide proof of eligibility.

[14][15][16] People who express doubts about Obama's eligibility or reject details about his early life are often informally called "birthers", a term that parallels[17] the nickname "truthers" for adherents of 9/11 conspiracy theories.

[32] Conspiracy theories about Obama's religion appeared at least as early as his 2004 U.S. Senate campaign in a press release by Illinois political candidate Andy Martin,[33] and, according to a Los Angeles Times editorial, as Internet rumors.

[38] In April of that year, some supporters of Hillary Clinton circulated anonymous chain emails repeating the same rumor;[39] among them was an Iowa campaign volunteer, who was fired when the story emerged.

[46] Jerome Corsi, author of the book The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality, told Fox News that "the campaign has a false, fake birth certificate posted on their website ... it's been shown to have watermarks from Photoshop.

[9][62] Noting "there have been numerous requests for Senator Barack Hussein Obama's official birth certificate," Fukino explained that the department was prohibited by state law from releasing it to "persons who do not have a tangible interest in the vital record".

Fuddy said that she had granted the exception to its normal policy of issuing only computer-generated copies by virtue of Obama's status, in an effort to avoid ongoing requests for the birth certificate.

[82] Nathan Goulding, chief technology officer of the National Review magazine, dismissed the matter of "layered components" found in the White House PDF by suggesting "that whoever scanned the birth certificate in Hawaii forgot to turn off the OCR setting on the scanner."

"[83] Goldie Taylor, a commentator for the African American news site The Grio, characterized the demand that Obama provide his birth certificate as an equivalent of making him "show his papers", as blacks were once required to do under Jim Crow laws.

[84] Sociologist Matthew W. Hughey has cited many of the claims as evidence of racial "othering" of Obama against the conflation of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) subject as the ideal and authentic American citizen.

[122] Another notable advocate is Alan Keyes, who was defeated by Obama in the 2004 Illinois U.S. Senate election, served as a diplomat in the Reagan administration, and is currently a media personality and self-described "conservative political activist".

[123] Orly Taitz, a California dentist and attorney who emigrated from the Soviet Union to Israel, then to the United States, and holds dual U.S. and Israeli citizenship, has been called the "queen bee of the birthers", because she is often seen as the face of the movement.

[128] In December 2008, Alex Koppelman, a senior writer for Salon, characterized nearly all of the prominent people promoting the story Obama was not eligible to be president – including Jerome Corsi, Philip Berg, Andy Martin, and Robert Schultz – as having a "history of conspiracist thought".

"[137] According to Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, "the birther movement has gained a large following on the radical right ... it has been adopted by the most noxious elements out there."

[138][139] James Wenneker von Brunn, an avowed white supremacist charged as the gunman in the June 10, 2009, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting, had previously posted messages to the Internet accusing Obama and the media of hiding documents about his life.

[150] On the March 30, 2011, edition of CNN Newsroom, anchor Suzanne Malveaux commented on Trump's statements, pointing out that she had made a documentary for which she had gone to Hawaii and spoken with people who knew Obama as a child.

[158] Volunteer investigators working under the direction of Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio have asserted that Obama's birth certificate is a computer-generated forgery.

[160][161] Alex Pareene, a staff writer for Salon, wrote regarding a May 2012 trip to Hawaii by Arpaio's people that "I think we have long since passed the point at which I'd find this story believable in a fictional setting.

Hill interviewed birther conspiracy advocate Orly Taitz at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville for a February 10, 2009, segment podcasted online by the IRN/USA Radio Network.

[171] After giving a speech at the Voice of America Freedom Rally in West Chester, Ohio on September 5, 2009, Republican congresswoman Jean Schmidt replied to a woman who commented that Obama was ineligible for the Presidency, "I agree with you.

Online petition sites such as that of Alan Keyes, who has been collecting signatures on the birth certificate issue, are a major source for generating mailing lists of movement conservatives.

[199] In an incident that attracted widespread media coverage, moderate Republican Representative Michael Castle was booed and heckled during a July 2009 town hall meeting in Georgetown, Delaware, when he told a woman protesting about Obama's birth certificate: "if you're referring to the president there, he is a citizen of the United States.

[207]Political analyst Andrew Sullivan, writing in The Sunday Times, stated The demographics tell the basic story: a black man is president and a large majority of white southerners cannot accept that, even in 2009.

[216][217] They had "to walk the fine line of humoring conspiracy-minded supporters without explicitly questioning Obama's legitimacy ..."[218] Other Republicans, including former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, however, have plainly rejected these claims.

[224] MSNBC political commentator Rachel Maddow has defined a "birther" as: A specific new breed of American conspiracy theorists who believe that the real problem with Barack Obama being president is that he can't possibly have been born in the United States.

"[25][231] Writing in December 2008, Alex Koppelman discussed the validity of the common argument – that Obama should release a copy of his full, original certificate and the rumors and doubts would disappear.

[61] In response to the notion that Obama's grandparents might have planted a birth announcement in newspapers just so their grandson could some day be president, FactCheck suggested that "those who choose to go down that path should first equip themselves with a high-quality tinfoil hat.

[247] By mid-December 2008, at least 17 lawsuits had been filed challenging Obama's eligibility in states including North Carolina,[248] Ohio,[249] Pennsylvania,[250] Hawaii,[251] Connecticut,[252] New Jersey, Texas and Washington.

[46][255] In April 2011, the Arizona legislature became the first to pass a bill "requiring President Obama and other presidential candidates to prove their U.S. citizenship before their names can appear on the state's ballot".

[258][259] In May 2012, the Arizona Secretary of State, Ken Bennett, asked Hawaii to verify Obama's Hawaiian birth to ensure his eligibility to appear on the November ballot.