During a Friday morning event at his new Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., Donald Trump finally admitted that President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Still—while trying to sweep his reputation for racist birtherism under the rug—Trump was introduced at the event by a man who himself has a history of birtherism.
Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney was one of the military veterans who spoke at Trump’s DC hotel on Friday. As flagged by Talking Points Memo, McInerney wrote an affidavit in 2010 challenging President Obama’s authority, due to “widespread and legitimate concerns” regarding his origin of birth.
“I cannot overstate how imperative it is to train such personnel to have confidence in the unified chain of command,” McInerney wrote. “Today, because of the widespread and legitimate concerns that the President is constitutionally ineligible to hold office, I fear what would happen should such a crisis occur today.”
ADVERTISEMENT
“[Obama] is the one single person in the Chain of Command that the Constitution demands proof of natural born citizenship,” he continued, bizarrely. “This determination is fundamental to our Republic, where civilian control over the military is the rule. According to our Constitution, the Commander in Chief must now, in the face of serious — and widely held — concerns that he is ineligible, either voluntarily establish his eligibility by authorizing release of his birth records or this court must authorize their discovery. The invasion of his privacy in these records is utterly trivial compared to the issues at stake here. Our military MUST have confidence their Commander in Chief lawfully holds this office and absent which confidence grievous consequences may ensue.”
(Spoiler: Obama was born in America. This has been a known fact for many years.)
McInerney (who has accused Obama of turning America into a “socialistic, communistic society,” and has served as a Fox News analyst) used to be the number-three commander of the Air Force. In the early Bush era, the Pentagon had deployed McInerney to help publicly sell its case on the Iraq War.
“I feel I have an obligation to the American people to be a part of the discourse and discuss these important national security issues because they are complex, especially on radical Islam. As a nation we have not had it. We have a president that has suppressed it,” McInerney told The Daily Beast earlier this month, regarding his decision to back Trump. “I have an obligation because I swore an oath to the Constitution to uphold and defend the nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding McInerney’s past birther views and his selection as a speaker at today’s ostensibly anti-birtherism event.
—Asawin Suebsaeng
Read it at TPM
