Birther Conspiracy: Five Years of False Claims That Obama Was Not Born in the United States
Tier 3Retracted With False Blame-Shift2011-02-01 to 2016-09-16
Factual Summary
From at least 2011 through September 2016, Donald Trump was the most prominent and persistent promoter of the "birther" conspiracy theory, which falsely claimed that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States and was therefore constitutionally ineligible for the presidency. Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961. Hawaii has been a U.S. state since 1959. The claim that Obama was born outside the United States is false. Multiple official and independent investigations established this fact repeatedly across the period in question.
**Origin and Escalation of Trump's Promotion**
Trump began publicly promoting the birther conspiracy theory in early 2011, years after it had first circulated in fringe online communities. In February 2011, Trump raised the issue in a television interview, stating that he questioned whether Obama had been born in the United States. He subsequently repeated the claim across dozens of television appearances, press statements, and social media posts through the full five-year period documented in this entry.
In March and April 2011, Trump claimed publicly that he had dispatched private investigators to Hawaii to research Obama's birth. He stated that the investigators were uncovering extraordinary information and implied that revelatory findings were imminent. No such findings were ever produced or publicly disclosed.
On April 27, 2011, responding in part to the sustained national attention generated by Trump's campaign, the White House released Obama's long-form birth certificate from the Hawaii Department of Health. The document confirmed that Obama was born at Kapiolani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital in Honolulu on August 4, 1961. Contemporaneous Hawaii vital records, birth announcements published in both the Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin in August 1961, and certifications from Hawaii state health officials all corroborated the document.
**Continuation After Certificate Release**
Despite the release of the long-form birth certificate, Trump continued making and endorsing birther claims for more than five additional years. In 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015, he made public statements questioning Obama's place of birth, sharing related content on social media, and declining to affirmatively state that Obama was born in the United States even when directly asked. PolitiFact and other fact-checkers documented dozens of individual instances across this period.
**The September 2016 Retraction and False Attribution**
On September 16, 2016, with the presidential general election approximately seven weeks away, Trump made a brief public statement acknowledging that Obama was born in the United States: "President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period." He offered no apology, no explanation for his five years of contrary public claims, and no acknowledgment that his previous statements had been false.
In the same statement, Trump falsely attributed the origin of the birther conspiracy theory to Hillary Clinton and her 2008 presidential campaign. He stated: "Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy." This claim was rated false by FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, and the Washington Post Fact Checker. An aide in Clinton's 2008 campaign, Sidney Blumenthal, reportedly forwarded a news article about Obama's background to a McClatchy reporter, a claim McClatchy disputed. No evidence documented that Clinton or her official campaign originated, promoted, or endorsed the claim that Obama was not born in the United States. The birther conspiracy theory circulated independently of any Clinton campaign activity. Trump's attribution of the theory's origin to Clinton was not supported by documented evidence and was contradicted by the record of which individuals and organizations had actually promoted the claim.
**Fact-Checker Findings**
FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, and the Washington Post Fact Checker all independently evaluated the claim that Clinton's campaign started the birther theory and rated it false. PolitiFact rated the claim "Pants on Fire," its lowest truth rating. The Washington Post Fact Checker awarded four Pinocchios. FactCheck.org published a detailed timeline demonstrating that Trump himself, not the Clinton campaign, was responsible for the sustained national prominence of the theory during the 2011 to 2016 period.
Primary Sources
1. White House release of Obama's long-form birth certificate, April 27, 2011 (document available at): https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2011/04/27/president-obamas-long-form-birth-certificate
2. Hawaii Department of Health certification of Obama's birth records: https://health.hawaii.gov/
3. FactCheck.org, "Trump's 'Birther' Lies," September 16, 2016: https://www.factcheck.org/2016/09/trumps-birther-lies/
4. PolitiFact, "Donald Trump's Pants on Fire claim that Hillary Clinton started 'birther' movement," September 16, 2016: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/sep/16/donald-trump/trumps-pants-fire-claim-clinton-started-birther-mo/
Corroborating Sources
1. Washington Post Fact Checker: "Trump's claim that Clinton started the birther movement": https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2016/09/16/donald-trumps-false-claim-that-clinton-started-the-birther-movement/
2. NPR: "From The Start, Obama Dealt With Birther Rumors," April 10, 2011: https://www.npr.org/2011/04/10/135318562/from-the-start-obama-dealt-with-birther-rumors
3. McClatchy: "Clinton aide denies he was 'birther' ringleader," September 17, 2016: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/election/article102404887.html
4. New York Times: "For Years, Trump Used Birther Claims to Prod Obama," September 16, 2016
5. CNN: "Fact check: Trump's false claim that Clinton started the birther movement," September 16, 2016: https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/16/politics/trump-clinton-birther-movement/index.html
Counterarguments and Context
Trump's September 2016 campaign representatives argued that Trump had personally "put an end to" the birther controversy by obtaining the long-form birth certificate in 2011 through his public pressure campaign, and that he deserved credit rather than criticism for the episode. This argument was rejected by fact-checkers who noted that Trump had continued making and endorsing birther claims for five years after the certificate's release. Trump never publicly apologized for the birther claims, nor did he acknowledge that the claims had been false. Following the September 2016 statement, he did not repeat the birther claim publicly during his first term, though he also did not retract the underlying assertion in his own earlier statements.
Regarding the Clinton attribution, Trump's campaign and some surrogates argued that elements of the 2008 primary contest included references to Obama's background and that the Blumenthal episode showed some Clinton adjacency to the theory's circulation. Fact-checkers evaluated these arguments and found them insufficient to support the specific and unqualified claim that Clinton or her campaign started the birther movement, particularly given the documented absence of Clinton personally promoting the claim.
Author's Note
This entry is classified as Tier 3 because the factual record rests on extensive primary documentation including the official birth certificate, contemporaneous Hawaii vital records, Trump's own public statements across the documented period, and independent fact-checker analyses from three separate organizations using documented methodologies. No legal proceeding arose from the birther claims. The classification reflects the strength of the documentary record, not adjudication. The related entry INDIV-005 addresses additional documented false claims about Obama.