RNC Chair: I Didn't Tell Trump to Shut Up

The Republican party’s chief says he did not tell Donald Trump to "shut up" about President Barack Obama’s birthplace, the National Journal reports. “I never said this,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus wrote in a Twitter post referencing a U.S. News & World Report headline,“GOP Boss Wants Trump to Shut up on Birther Claims.”

Priebus told U.S. News he believes the president was born in Hawaii and said the issue of his birth certificate “gets me off track to what I really need to focus on, which is how to beat [Obama].”

Trump, the New York real estate magnate and star of NBC’s “The Celebrity Apprentice,” has repeatedly questioned whether Obama was born in the United States and says the country desperately needs a new president in 2012.

According to Newsmax’s Ronald Kessler, Trump will formally enter the White House race just a few days after the May 22 finale of this season’s “Apprentice.” Trump has said he is likely to run as a Republican but could also succeed as an independent.