Trump's birtherism is now Republican gospel: 72 percent of GOP voters still doubt President Obama's citizenship

This is why Trump calls Obama "the founder of ISIS" -- because Republicans will believe him

By Sophia Tesfaye

Senior Politics Editor

Published August 11, 2016 8:26PM (EDT)

With his near daily, and often times hourly, outrageous remarks dominating the news cycle in a rinse-and-repeat pattern of outrage followed by a refusal to budge, Donald Trump and his campaign of demagoguery have drowned out otherwise newsworthy political developments for over a year now.

“On other campaigns, we would have to scrounge for crumbs,” one senior Hillary Clinton adviser told Time recently. “Here, it’s a fire hose. He can set himself on fire at breakfast, kill a nun at lunch and waterboard a puppy in the afternoon. And that doesn’t even get us to prime time.”

Just this week alone, Trump informed his supporters and the media that there is no use in waiting for any so-called "presidential pivot," before he proceeded to suggest a second Amendment remedy to a possible Clinton win and accused President Obama of being "the founder of ISIS."

While Trump was making his latest outrageous statement at a rally in Florida Wednesday evening, NBC News released a very revealing -- albeit rather apparent -- poll finding that seems to have been underreported.

72 percent of registered Republican voters still hold doubts about the President's citizenship, even as his second term in office enters its final months.

According to the NBC News|SurveyMonkey poll conducted in late June and early July of more than 1,700 registered voters, only 27 percent of Republicans agree with that Obama was born in the U.S. statement, while 41 percent disagree.

Another 31 percent of Republicans expressed their continued confusion on the matter elevated to prominence by the "Birther-in-Chief," Trump, responding that they neither agreed nor disagreed with the statement:

-barack_obama_was_born_in_the_united_states-_republicans_democrats_chartbuilder_4b7439d88c759bc84f7276552e692fde.nbcnews-ux-600-480

Since there is no use in fact checking this myth that is seemingly widely held by Republicans, I offer a brief history of Trump's five year long birther campaign -- in tweets:


By Sophia Tesfaye

Sophia Tesfaye is Salon's senior editor for news and politics, and resides in Washington, D.C. You can find her on Twitter at @SophiaTesfaye.

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Birtherism Donald Trump Election 2016 Elections 2016 Poll