Corey Lewandowski, President Donald Trump's first of three campaign managers, suggested this week on a Virginia radio show that the thought of a Republican politician delegitimizing Barack Obama's presidency was insane.
"The Democrats are trying to say he is not a legitimate candidate," Lewandowski said. "Can you imagine just for a second if a Republican congressman would have gone out and say this about Barack Obama and continued that narrative? It would be an uproar in the mainstream media."
Lewandowski's former boss, of course, gave a prominent voice to the birther movement, popularizing the conspiracy theory that posited Obama was born in Kenya and therefore was not legally eligible to be president.
In September, after Lewandowski was replaced as campaign manager for attacking a reporter, Trump held a press conference in his Washington, D.C. hotel to publicly admit that Obama was indeed born in the United States, despite his previous claims that suggested otherwise.
After all those years of doubting Obama's birth certificate, Trump is ironically dealing with his own legitimacy concerns. Following reports from the U.S. intelligence community which indicated that Russia hacked high-ranking Democrats to deliberately tilt the election in Trump's favor, 66 congressmen have announced that they will not be attending his inauguration.
Republicans, especially those closest to Trump, and even Trump himself, have expressed shock and outrage that elected officials would choose to boycott the president's swearing-in ceremony. Although Democrats' symbolic gesture appears to have successfully riled up Republicans, Trump will still be taking over the Oval Office and his policy platform will come with him.
"This is a fundamental and wholesale change coming to Washington and it is going to be unlike anything this town has seen in a lifetime," Lewandowski said on the "John Fredericks" show. "He understands the serious nature of what he is about to undertake. And he understands the world is watching."
Listen to Corey Lewandowski's radio appearance here:
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