Billionaire and potential 2012 presidential candidate Donald Trump added more fuel to the debate surrounding President Barack Obama's citizenship Friday night, asking what hidden information is contained on the president's birth certificate.
"Either he wasn’t born in the country or he doesn’t have a birth certificate," Trump said on Sean Hannity's Fox News show. "Or
there’s something on the birth certificate that he doesn’t want people to see.”
Obama has never publicly released his birth certificate, instead offering a document known as a Certification of Live Birth from the state of Hawaii.
Obama has “a certificate of live birth," Trump told Hannity. "It’s a big step lower. In fact, in some places you can’t get married or get a driver’s license with a certificate of live birth.”
Trump also questioned why the president is “spending millions of dollars trying to stay away from the issue,” rather than confronting it.
"Either he wasn’t born in the country or he doesn’t have a birth certificate … or there’s something on the birth certificate that he doesn’t want people to see.”
When Hannity asked Trump what that could be, Trump said: "Maybe it says he’s a Muslim, which wouldn’t bother me. If it’s that thing, you know, if that’s it, it’s it. That’s what it is.”
Trump also questioned Obama’s academic record, saying: “Obama had bad marks and he gets into Harvard, OK? You know, everyone thinks he was a super-genius. He wasn’t a genius. He had bad marks. It was a big story. Everyone says, ‘How did he get into Harvard? How did he get into Columbia?’ He had horrible marks. ...
“Somebody said, 'What’s his [Obama’s] biggest asset?' He is politically lucky. He really is. He’s led a charmed life. Well, the media is letting him get away with it.”
Trump went on to discuss Obama’s past associations with retired college professor and co-founder of the Weather Underground Bill Ayers, the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright and convicted real estate developer and political fundraiser Tony Rezko.
Trump asserted that Ayers wrote Obama’s best-selling book "Dreams of My Father" and that Obama sat in Wright’s congregation for 20 years while Wright “spewed hate against white people."
Obama dropped his friends when the going got tough, Trump said. “So you got Reverend Wright, you got Bill Ayers, you got Tony Rezko. He drops these guys, and the press leaves him alone.”
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