WASHINGTON — President Obama dropped a birther bombshell yesterday, releasing his “long-form” birth certificate to try to finally stomp out a conspiracy theory that he wasn’t born in the United States and couldn’t serve as president.
After denying requests for more than two years to make the document public, the White House yesterday posted the green-colored Certificate of Live Birth from the state of Hawaii on its Web site after making a special appeal to state officials to release it.
Like the shorter version Obama made public in the 2008 campaign, the long form shows that the president was born in a Honolulu hospital on Aug. 4, 1961, at 7:24 p.m.
The document also includes some additional information and includes the signatures of his mother, and the doctor who attended the birth, Dr. David Sinclair, as well as the local registrar.
It lists Obama’s name as Barack Hussein Obama II, and his parents, Barack Hussein Obama, described as a 25-year old university student, and his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, age 18. Her occupation outside home during pregnancy: none.
For some reason, when she signed the certificate, Obama’s mother put her first name, Stanley, in parentheses.
His dad’s race is listed as “African,” with a birthplace of “Kenya, East Africa,” while his mom is listed as being born in Wichita, Kan. There is no space included to designate a religion — contradicting some birthers who claimed it would show he was born a Muslim.
A Hawaii state registrar signed that the document was a true copy of the original held in bound volumes of state archives, but Obama yesterday said some critics might never give up.
Obama made a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room to announce the decision to make the document public, flashing a bright spotlight on an issue his advisers had previously hoped would die down, and scolded the media and opponents for dwelling on it.
“I know that there’s going to be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest. But I’m speaking to the vast majority of the American people, as well as to the press,” Obama said.
Obama appeared to take a shot right at Donald Trump, who pushed the “birther” issue to jump ahead in the GOP presidential polls.
“We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers,” Obama said.
The White House maintained that the public would not have been well served by allowing Trump and the Republicans to keep debating the issue.
“A lot of the pundits out there have talked about the fact that this whole birther debate has been really bad for the Republican Party and would probably be good for the president politically. But despite that, the president, as I said, was struck by how this was crowding out the debate,” said White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer.
Until yesterday, the White House said the previously released short form of the birth certificate, which Hawaiians get upon request and which counts to get a driver’s license or passport, was the appropriate document.
The change in strategy came after recent polls showed as much as a quarter of the country didn’t believe Obama was born in the United States, with as many as 45 percent of Republicans doubting he was born here.
Making opportune use of the situation, the White House released the document just as Trump was helicoptering to New Hampshire for a day of politicking.
But Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus blamed Obama for causing the distraction himself, though Obama aides have tried to make the story die since the election.
“The president ought to spend his time getting serious about repairing our economy,” Priebus said. “Unfortunately his campaign politics and talk about birth certificates is distracting him from our No. 1 priority — our economy.”
Additional reporting by Carl Campanile