Birther Trump and anti-Muslim Carson: Duhh!

On Sunday’s talk shows, Donald Trump, the billionaire bloviator of birtherism, refused to says if he believes that President Obama was born in the United States, and Dr. Ben Carson said that the U.S. should not elect a Muslim president.

The question circulating for months has been, “Donald Trump hurting the GOP?” After the past few days the answer has to be an undeniable yes, and throw Ben Carson in the same pot. It’s not that their recent comments are transferring to the rest of the party (that is unknown), but their statements are sucking the air away from Hillary’s continued email scandal and the important issues being discussed by other candidates.

Whether or not Trump should have corrected the questioner who last week said that the president was a Muslim is not the issue here (actually the questioner’s statement, which indicated all U.S. Muslims as bad people, was much worse than what he said about Obama).

Back in July, Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that he’s still not convinced President Obama was born in America, but he’s not interested in rehashing the issue.

“I don’t know. I really don’t know,” the Trump told CNN on Thursday. “I don’t know why he wouldn’t release his records.” Trump insisted though he doesn’t want arguments over the president’s origin to define his candidacy.

On Sunday, on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, the host gave Trump an opportunity to put his history of birtherism to rest, but Trump avoided the question.

“Well, you know, I don’t get into it, George,” Trump responded when asked if he believed Obama was born in the United States. “I talk about jobs. I’m talking about the military. I don’t get into it. I mean, he asked that question and I just want to talk about the things because frankly it’s of no longer interest to me. We’re beyond that. And it’s just something I don’t talk about. I want to talk about the military. I want to talk about the vets and how badly they’re treated. I want to talk about jobs. I don’t get into that, George.”

Stephanopoulos tried again, “But the way to get beyond it is to answer yes or no. Do you believe — ?”

Trump answered that it was a possibility but he doesn’t like to get into it or talk about it.

Stephanopoulos gave it a third “So — and even though you’ve raised questions and you’ve investigated it in the past, you’re still —“

Trump continued to punt,  “Well, you know, people thought I should have defended. Some people thought I should have defended the president in terms of the question that was asked the other night. And my attitude is, would he have done that for me? If somebody said that about me. And you know, he’s been — he — he’s very capable of defending himself, believe me.”

Putting aside for a moment the fact that the birther claims (which were started by the 2008 Hillary Clinton campaign) are nonsense, if Trump doesn’t want his campaign to be defined by the birther issue, he should have just answered yes, Obama was born in the U.S.

When the controversy began, Andrew Breitbart said over and over it’s a losing issue. Face it: Even if it could be proven true (and it won’t be, as I will explain in a moment), with only 414 days before the 2016 election, there is no way for the issue to make it through all of the courts before there is a new POTUS anyway. 

Meanwhile, this losing issue has become, for now, the top story and the first question Trump and every other Republican gets asked. But Trump has company in Carson, who said on Meet The Press that the United States should not elect a Muslim president. ”I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation,” Carson said. “I absolutely would not agree with that.” He also said that Islam, as a religion, is incompatible with the Constitution.

Even if one is a Carson supporter and believes his ridiculous answer true, why in the world would he say that? There are no Muslims radical or not running for president in 2016, so all his comment did was enable Carson to join Donald Trump at the top of the silly part of the next few news cycles and not in a good way.

Now, instead of talking about the fact that the Democrats pushed through a crappy Iran deal, or how almost every day there is a new revelation about Hillary email scandal, or Carson and Trump’s policies or the policies of their GOP rivals, the mainstream media has an excuse to focus on foolish, irrelevant statements made by two of the leading Republican candidates.

Finally, a note about the birther nonsense. The birthers can never explain Barack Obama’s birth announcements that ran in local Hawaiian newspapers soon after he was born. For those to be fake, Obama’s mom would have to have seen into the future, known he was going to run for president, and planted those announcements in 1961.

The only other explanation for Obama to have been born outside the country despite the birth announcements is that someone at the DNC performed one of those Star Trek maneuvers and flew toward the sun to pick up speed, circle the sun and come back in the past (that’s what they did in Star Trek IV with the Klingon Bird-of-Prey).

Since neither Obama’s mother being a seer or the Klingon Bird-of-Prey are rational explanations, I continue to reject the birther movement. I would accept it if Trump builds a working Klingon Ship (and I get a ride and the cloaking device works).