Hillary Clinton slammed Donald Trump on Friday for questioning President Obama’s US citizenship – saying her GOP rival owes the president and the American people an apology.
Addressing a Black Women’s Agenda Symposium workshop in Washington, DC, Clinton lashed out at her rival and declared – to loud applause — that he is “unfit to be president of the United States.”
“For five years, he has led the birther movement to delegitimize our first black president,” she said.
“His campaign was founded on this outrageous lie. There is no erasing it in history,” she said. “Just yesterday, Trump again refused to say with his own words that the president was born in the United States.”
Trump’s campaign issued a statement Thursday night praising him for bringing “this ugly incident to its conclusion” in 2011 “by successfully compelling President Obama to release his birth certificate.”
Trump’s campaign communications director said in the statement that Trump “did a great service to the President and the country” by raising doubts about Obama’s birthplace — leading Obama to release his “long form” birth certificate in 2011 proving his birth in Hawaii.
But Trump has not personally refuted his allegations.
‘Barack Obama was born in America, plain and simple. And Donald Trump owes him and the American people an apology.’
- Hillary Clinton
“Now, Donald’s advisers have the temerity to say he’s doing the country a service by pushing these lies. No. He isn’t. He’s feeding into the worst impulses, the bigotry and bias that lurks in our country,” Clinton said.
“Barack Obama was born in America, plain and simple. And Donald Trump owes him and the American people an apology,” she added.
“So my friends, there is no new Donald Trump. There never will be. Donald Trump looks at President Obama after eight years as our president. He still doesn’t seem him as an American. Think of how dangerous that is. Imagine a person in the Oval Office who traffics in conspiracy theories and refuses to let them go no matter what the facts are.”
Clinton also addressed her recent bout with pneumonia, which her campaign kept under wraps for two days before she collapsed while attending a 9/11 commemoration at Ground Zero.
“As the world knows, I was a little under the weather recently,” Clinton told the audience. “The good news is my pneumonia finally got some Republicans interested in women’s health.
“Now looking back, I know I should have followed my doctor’s orders to rest, but my instinct was to push through it,” she said.
Clinton ended her address by raising several controversial episodes from Trump’s campaign.
“Donald Trump looks at a distinguished judge born in Indiana, and he sees a Mexican, not an American,” she said. “He looks at a Gold Star family and sees them as Muslims, not patriotic Americans.”