Birthers

So Steve Doocy, Gretchen and the other guy listened politely and patiently while Mr. Trump, on the phone from his home in an actual pile of his own noxious bullshit, rambled about birth certificates and his concerns about the president’s citizenship:

“Now, this guy either has a birth certificate or he doesn’t. And I didn’t think this was such a big deal, but I will tell you, it’s turning out to be a very big deal because people now are calling me from all over saying, please don’t give up on this issue. If you weren’t born in this country, you can not be president.”

Right. Well. The president has a birth certificate, and everyone has seen it. It’s that simple, end of story.

Trump is a professional entertainer, making it difficult to quantify how “seriously” he is taken by Americans, but there is no denying that he’s one of the most famous people in the country, making him, in all probability, the most famous birther in the country. He’s way more famous than Orly Taitz, more famous than Michele Bachmann, probably more famous than Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs put together. When a Republican or conservative celebrity says something goofy, 50 percent of the population will automatically take it with a grain of salt, because of our splendid system of growing partisanship. But Trump isn’t a specifically conservative celebrity. He’s generally apolitical, and when he makes noise about politics, it’s as a so-called independent.

I am just assuming that when Trump goes on a full media blitz telling everyone that Barack Obama has no birth certificate — or childhood photos, or other demonstrably false claims — that people who haven’t been neck-deep in this nonsense since 2007 might be inclined to take it at face value.

Unlike trutherism, which is tolerated by no one anywhere close to the mainstream on either side of the partisan divide (Alex Jones was not invited to commiserate on “Fox & Friends” or MSNBC after his own weird “View” appearance), the right-wing media generally either ignores or indulges birtherism. And Trump will not be held to account for his idiocies by NBC, a network that desperately needs his television franchise to continue making it money. I’m guessing that the further into the Obama presidency we get, the more people will come to believe that he’s secretly foreign.

All we can really do, I think, is promise, as a nation, to shun Donald Trump entirely. Stop interviewing him. Stop giving him television shows. Stop encouraging him.

The repellent reality television personality has recorded robo-calls for Romney, because nothing makes a person more excited to vote than the sound of Donald Trump invading your personal space and hectoring you for no reason. Citizens across Michigan can look forward to unsolicited phone calls from a recording of the guy who tells D-list celebrities that they’re fired, only instead he will be telling them that the former governor of Massachusetts is “a good man” and former Sen. Rick Santorum is a “career politician.”

Any decent human being with a modicum of shame would be embarrassed to be seen publicly with Mr. Trump, which is partly why Romney refused to be photographed with the grotesque parody of American wealth-worship when meeting with him late last year, but Romney is in desperation mode as he seeks to win the support of a bunch of people who just don’t like him very much. Now Trump is headlining Romney fundraisers and making radio appearances on behalf of the candidate and making sure that Americans know that they can expect Mr. Romney to be as fine a president as Trump University is a (non-accredited for-profit online) college.

Romney, truly the “Trump Steaks” of Republican presidential candidates, is statistically tied with Rick Santorum in the most recent Michigan poll, and running even with Santorum nationally as well, but this Trump endorsement should be a huge help in his efforts to win over the all-important “credulous racist birther moron” vote.

Trump made sure his big endorsement coincided with the premiere of the new season of “Celebrity Apprentice,” and he is also counting on the fact that everyone basically forgot exactly how toxic his own pretend run for the nomination eventually became last year. And basically only liberal blogs are even bringing up the fact that Trump’s “platform” as a candidate was dark insinuations about the president’s birthplace and personal history, and that it collapsed entirely after the president actually released his “long-form birth certificate,” which showed that his already released regular birth certificate was genuine and accurate. (Though a couple conservatives have criticized Romney’s open embrace of Trump, more because Trump is extremely unpopular than because he’s a racist fraud.)

Romney indulging Trump by accepting his endorsement was gross, and Romney recruiting Trump to actively campaign for him should be universally declared well outside the realm of “acceptable” national campaign behavior, but it’s maybe too obviously sad and desperate for people to get up in arms about. (And the political press is uncomfortable explicitly calling a ridiculous con artist a ridiculous con artist, even when it’s post-birtherism Donald Trump, so the lack of “nationally reviled untrustworthy clown endorses candidate” headlines at the traditional news organizations is not terribly surprising.) But it’s also gross that NBC renewed Trump’s contract and launched a new season of his terrible show, and it did it for similar reasons as Romney: He gets ratings, and headlines.

It just shouldn’t be forgotten or ignored that the only substantial difference between campaigning with Donald Trump and campaigning with Orly Taitz is that Trump is considered kosher because he’s a major-network TV star. (Well, and Orly has much better hair.)

Trump still has a regular Monday morning “Fox & Friends” call-in deal? I guess Fox can overlook a regular guest being a loyal employee of a rival media conglomerate — Trump abandoned his publicity stunt presidential campaign when NBC threatened to find a new “Apprentice” host, remember — as long as they’re willing to spout birtherist bullshit on live television.

So Trump, who badly damaged his “lovable mogul” brand with his divisive and humiliating fake campaign, will now (or in a month or so) parasitically attach himself to a presidential candidate, in order to flatter Trump’s sense of himself as an important kingmaker, a delusion that has been enabled by Romney and Perry and Bachmann and Cain actually meeting with him. I’m guessing Trump will endorse whomever is polling best next month.

Will the press (the non-Fox press) mention Trump’s noxious, racist birtherism, should the recipient of the Trump endorsement gratefully accept the Trump nod with a joint appearance? I am not holding my breath.

But WorldNetDaily considers Cain one of is own. Cain seems to write the columns himself (or at least he did initially, before his campaign took off), unless his ghost is particularly fond of exclamation points. None of them involve birtherism, which for years now has been WND’s sole driving concern. (Cain did flirt with bitherism earlier this year, thanks mostly to Donald Trump, but he now believes the president is an American.)

Farah, a friend of Cain’s for several years, told The Ticket that he has been surprised by Cain’s rise over the past few months. While Farah would not make an official endorsement, he said Cain is his “favorite” candidate.

Good work, Herman: You’ve got Farah’s support! That should be more than enough to overcome the fact that Cain is basically taking the month of October off from campaigning in order to sell his book, because this entire “presidential run” was basically done to create a little buzz around a burgeoning conservative media personality, and the fact that he’s now tied for second in the polls is due to the hilarious collapse of various other more “serious” campaigns.