LEGITIMATE CONCERNS

On ABC’s This Week, incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus said that Republicans never questioned the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency. It was a statement made to counter what Congressman and Civil Rights Icon John Lewis said about Trump’s presidency in an interview on “Meet The Press”.

Lewis’ claims about Trump being an illegitimate president is based on that the incoming president lost the national popular vote by 3 million votes and only won several key states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, and North Carolina by a total of 100K votes. It is also based on intelligence reports stating that the Russian government orchestrated a coordinated effort to try to influence the recent presidential election by disseminating inflammatory stories and an e-mail hacking operation in order to discredit Hillary Clinton.

But back to Mr. Preibus’s claim that Republicans never questioned Obama’s legitimacy to office, I wonder if he has ever heard of Google.

This is what I found

16 May 2012, Denver Post, Coffman says Obama “not an America”

4 November 2010, NBC News, Senator Mitch McConnell, “Our top legislative priority is to make Obama a one-term president”

11 August 2016, Mediaite: “New Poll Shows That 41% of Republicans STILL Don’t Think Obama Was Born In The US”

13 July 2010, Politico, “Vitter backs birther suits”

28 July 2009, Salon, “The Birthers in Congress”

13 May 2009, Nashville Scene, “Republicans Get More Unstable By The Day”

13 September 2010, New York Times, “Gingrich: President Exhibits ‘Kenyan, Anticolonial Behavior’”

20 February 2015, The Washington Post, “A history of Obama being called ‘anti-colonial’”

27 September 2010, New Republic, “It's Not Just D'Souza: British People Think Obama Is a Kenyan Anti-Colonialist, Too”

1 March 2011, New York Times, “Huckabee Questions Obama Birth Certificate”

22 May 2012, Salon, “Arpaio Goons Sent to Hawaii for Important Birther Investigation”

17 July 2012, Politico, “Arpaio: Birth Certificate a Fraud”

18 December 2012, Phoenix New Times, “Arizona GOP Chairman Tom Morrissey Says He's Not a ‘Birther,’ but Obama's Birth Certificate Doesn't Seem Real”

15 December 2016, USA Today, “Sheriff Joe Arpaio renews birther claims about Obama's birth certificate”

15 December 2016, The Atlantic, “The Last of the Birthers”

24 June 2010, Salon, “Steve King Makes A Birther Joke on The Floor of the House”

5 January 2011, Politico, “Steve King Unveils Birthright Bill”

6 January 2015, 114th Congress, H.R. 140 – Birthright Citizenship Act of 2015, sponsor Rep. Steve King (IA-4, R)

28 June 2010, Colorado Independent, “Tancredo Headed to World Net Daily ‘Birther’ Conference”

2 October 2013, The Hill, “(Peter) King: 30 to 40 GOP Lawmakers Refuse to Admit Legitimacy of Obama’s Presidency”

Wikipedia has an article dedicated to Obama citizenship conspiracy theories.

Maybe Priebus could talk to his boss about delegitimizing Obama’s presidency. After all it was Trump who claimed that people who went to school with Obama never saw him (rated Pants on Fire by PolitiFact), was called out by The View Panelists Joy Behr & Whoopi Goldberg on the claim that Obama wasn’t born in this country, and was embarrassed by Obama at the 2011 White House Correspondents Dinner.

But I bet that Trump will tell Priebus that “Obama was born in the United States. Period” and it was really Hillary Clinton who started the birther controversy (nope).

By the way, Priebus was the RNC Chair for a majority of the Obama’s presidency and allowed this spectacle to happen. In April 2011, Trump received an introductory phone call from Priebus when Trump was flirting with a presidential bid.

And now Priebus is asking Obama, the president whose legitimacy was frequently questioned, to step up and quite Democrats who question Trump’s legitimacy.

My answer to Priebus is this

Why should he?