Gutfeld: Questioning Obama’s Citizenship “Wasn’t a Sustained Thing”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Sep. 17, 2024) — In a discussion on Monday’s edition of “The Five” about political speech that could potentially incite violence, former Tennessee congressman Harold Ford, Jr. suggested 45th President and 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s alleged contention that Barack Hussein Obama was “not a citizen” constituted a form of political instigation.

The conversation among the five co-hosts took place in the wake of a second attempt Sunday on Trump’s life as he enjoyed an “off-the-record” afternoon at his golf club in Palm Beach County, FL.

[Note: Whether intentional or not, the citizen-produced video of the program often repeats the co-hosts’ statements and at other times, skips.]

In early 2011, Trump began openly questioning whether Obama is a “natural born Citizen,” one of three constitutional requirements for the president, stridently calling for Obama to release his “long-form” birth certificate.

Stemming from credible reports that Obama was born in Kenya or Indonesia, many Americans had already questioned Obama’s eligibility after he announced his presidential candidacy in early 2007.

In response, the media imposed a wall of silence on the issue when it was not ridiculing those expressing concern that an ineligible candidate could be elected the nation’s chief executive.

Both before and after the 2008 presidential election declaring Obama victorious, a number of citizens filed legal challenges which were dismissed on technicalities or, upon reaching the U.S. Supreme Court, were denied oral argument.

In an April 7, 2011 synopsis of an interview between Trump and Today anchor Meredith Vieira, Mediaite wrote:

Recent polls shockingly suggest that Donald Trump‘s recent presidential campaign rhetoric is not just part of a campaign promoting his show Celebrity Apprentice (or…Donald Trump), but rather has led him to be considred a serious contender in the GOP primary. He recently sat down with Today co-host Meredith Vieira in a revealing interview in which he was very critical of President Obama’s foreign policy, and also revealed that he had a team in Hawaii investigating Obama’s birth certificate.

A rush transcript from NBC of the exchange minus the referenced video indicates Trump said he dispatched individuals to Hawaii seeking Obama’s birth record who he reported “can’t believe what they’re finding.”

The transcript concludes:

i’d like him to show his birth certificate. can i be honest with you? i hope he can. if he can’t, if he can’t, if he wasn’t born in this country, and i’m not saying it’s a real possibility. but it’s much greater than two or three weeks ago, then he’s pulled one of the greatest cons in the history of politics and beyond.

As The Post & Email reported on February 7, 2014, a citizen who attended an April 8, 2011 meeting at Trump Tower about the Obama birth certificate/eligibility issue recalled that during the meeting, Trump told the group, “My sources in DC are telling me that a fake birth certificate is going to be issued very soon.”

On the morning of April 27, 2011, the White House uploaded to its website what it said was a PDF made from a scan of Obama’s “long-form” birth certificate allegedly held by the Hawaii Department of Health. Learning of the image’s release from reporters during a stop in New Hampshire, Trump responded by taking credit, pledging to “look at it.” “We have to see is it real, is it proper, what’s on it…,” he added, saying he hoped it “checked out beautifully.”

Approximately four months later, an investigation into the origins of the image by then-Sheriff Joseph Arpaio’s “Cold Case Posse” was launched at the request of more than 250 of Arpaio’s constituents. Less than six months would elapse when lead investigator Mike Zullo would announce at a press conference that his team found probable cause to believe it to be a “computer-generated forgery.”

Also found fraudulent was Obama’s purported Selective Service registration form.

A second presser in July 2017 confirmed the “probable cause” standard had been exceeded by investigators’ findings.

At a final press conference in December 2016, Zullo revealed his probe found at least nine elements appearing on the Obama birth-certificate image were digitally copied from a real, paper Hawaii birth certificate investigators acquired.

In a September 2016 press conference at the height of his first presidential campaign, Trump declared Obama “was born in the United States. Period,” over which the media, which never investigated the matter itself, indulgently gloated.

According to The New York Times in 2017, Trump maintained his interest in the Obama birth certificate, an issue the media deemed the “birther movement,” naming Trump its leader.

Approximately 20 minutes into Monday’s program, co-host Judge Jeanine Pirro asked Ford for his reaction to Democrats’ drumbeat commentary that Trump “is a threat to our democracy” and equivalent to Hitler, for example, Ford recounted previous presidential assassination attempts, including the “multiple attempts” on the life of President Gerald Ford, injuring of President Ronald Reagan and the fatal shooting of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, Sr., who was seeking the 1968 Democrat presidential nomination. “I think there are so many efforts to harm our country and to harm presidents that are stopped and neutralized by law enforcement,” he said.

“…Unfortunately, I hope I’m dead wrong, but unfortunately this kind of behavior may not stop,” Ford continued at 20:29, “because I do believe the language has ratcheted up on a lot of sides. Remember former President Trump: for the entire presidency of President Obama, he said that he was not a citizen; he called Vice President Harris ‘stupid…'”

He added, however, that political violence, regardless of its source, “is just wrong.”

In turn (21:40), Pirro responded, “…I think there’s a big difference between saying someone’s not a citizen and someone’s stupid and calling someone ‘Hitler’ and ‘an existential threat…'”

Ford took issue with Pirro’s characterization of what he said. At that point co-host Greg Gutfeld weighed in with, “If you want to call him ‘Hitler,’ call him ‘Hitler’; I don’t really care, right?…But I do think there is a difference in how people [here, the audio skips, but this writer, having seen the broadcast, believes what was said was “react. When Trump said Obama was not”] born in the United States, 99% of the people thought that was a joke. It was not a sustained thing.”

“What you’re dealing with with Democrats, I think, is a weaponized persuasion tactic…” Gutfeld continued, “…if you continually, over time, compare somebody to Hitler or Mussolini, you actually spread the key words of ‘existential threat to democracy’ or ‘evil…'”

As readers of this publication are aware, questions over Obama’s background persist more than 17 years after he first announced his presidential candidacy, brought into only sharper focus since the leader of the birth-certificate probe, former private investigator Mike Zullo, declared in December 2016 that two forensic document analysts, working in different disciplines and without knowledge of the other, affirmed Zullo’s findings.

In a 2018 interview, Zullo revealed that two U.S. intelligence agents described the knowledge Obama was not born in the United States as an “open secret” in the nation’s capital.

To the public’s knowledge, the FBI has not investigated the origins of the forgery posted at whitehouse.gov and held by the National Archives, as Zullo detailed earlier this year.

In an undated interview posted on his “X” timeline, former FBI agent John DeSouza claimed that as he was cultivated as an U.S. intelligence “asset,” “Barry Soetoro,” a name Obama reportedly used during his college years, was “not even a United States citizen.”

On August 20, “The Five” co-host Jesse Watters appeared to indicate that interest in the Obama birth certificate was, in fact, sustained. Should Obama ally Kamala Harris win the presidential election, Watters said at the time, “We’ll be sending Johnny to Hawaii to get the real truth about the birth certificate.”