by Sharon Rondeau
(May 6, 2026) — On his Wednesday night program, “Jesse Watters Primetime,” in a comparison drawn between “Barack Hussein Obama” and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, host Jesse Watters declared Obama “definitely not born in Africa.”
Mamdani was born in Uganda, which Watters pointed out would preclude him from running for president.
Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution requires the president and commander-in-chief to be a “natural born Citizen,” a term the Framers did not define when they wrote the founding document.
Many Americans understand “natural born Citizen” to mean simply “born in the United States.” However, others, particularly legal scholars who follow the issue closely, say it imposes a higher citizenship standard by requiring that a presidential candidate’s parents have been U.S. citizens when the candidate was born in the United States.
Obama claims to have been born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961 to a U.S.-citizen mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and a Kenyan-born, British-citizen father, Barack Hussein Obama (Sr.). No hospital has confirmed the claim, and an image released by the White House on April 27, 2011 said to be a PDF of Obama’s “long-form” birth certificate held by the Hawaii Department of Health (HDOH) was later found by a criminal investigation to be a “computer-generated forgery.”
Investigators for the probe, authorized in 2011 by then-Maricopa County, AZ Sheriff Joseph Arpaio and operational through December 2016, also found Obama’s purported Selective Service registration form to be fraudulent.
In his 2020 memoir, “Sheriff Joe Arpaio: An American Legend,” Arpaio suggested Obama is a “naturalized” U.S. citizen, “born of a U.S. citizen, but constitutionally unqualified to serve as president.”
In three press conferences over the duration of the probe, “Cold Case Posse” lead investigator Mike Zullo detailed how the group determined Obama’s only publicly-proffered document to be fraudulent created “with the intent to deceive.”
Two independent forensic analysts the posse commissioned, Zullo revealed in a final press conference on December 15, 2016, reached conclusions similar to his own.
Watters did not say how he was certain Obama was “not born in Africa,” which some observers claim is a strong possibility based on credible reports issued prior to Obama’s first presidential campaign.
In December 2007, former “Hardball” host and ardent Obama supporter Chris Matthews declared Obama “born in Indonesia.”
During the 2008 presidential campaign, articles suggesting Obama was foreign-born mysteriously disappeared or underwent hasty revisions.
While Arpaio readily admits the investigation did not focus on Obama’s birthplace, the “fake government documents” discovered give rise to the question as to why a “long-form” birth certificate said to be on file with the HDOH is reportedly not genuine.
In 2018, almost two years after the investigation concluded, Zullo revealed that two U.S. intelligence agents informed him it is “an open secret” that Obama “was not born in the United States.”
In the not-too-distant past, Watters has ventured into the “birth certificate” question on-air on “The Five,” as has colleague Greg Gutfeld, though in an arguably jocose manner.
In 2024, Watters pledged to “sue Obama for forgery because we all know the birth certificate wasn’t real.”
Updated, 6:52 a.m., May 7, 2026
National Review Online: Suborned In the U.S.A.
JULY 31, 2009 – 7:20 AM ET
By Andrew C. McCarthy
Throughout the 2008 campaign, Barack Hussein Obama claimed it was a “smear” to refer to him as “Barack Hussein Obama.” The candidate had initially rhapsodized over how his middle name, the name of the prophet Mohammed’s grandson, would signal a new beginning in American relations with the Muslim world. But when the nomination fight intensified, Obama decided that Islamic heritage was a net negative. So, with a media reliably uncurious about political biographies outside metropolitan Wasilla, Obama did what Obama always does: He airbrushed his personal history on the fly.
Suddenly, it was “just making stuff up,” as Obama put it, for questioners “to say that, you know, maybe he’s got Muslim connections.” “The only connection I’ve had to Islam,” the candidate insisted, “is that my grandfather on my father’s side came from [Kenya]. But I’ve never practiced Islam.” Forget about “Hussein”; the mere mention of Obama’s middle initial “H” riled the famously thin-skinned senator. Supporters charged that “shadowy attackers” were “lying about Barack’s religion, claiming he is a Muslim.” The Obamedia division at USA Today, in a report subtly titled “Obama’s grandma slams ‘untruths,'” went so far as to claim that Obama’s Kenyan grandmother is a Christian even though a year earlier, when Obama’s “flaunt Muslim ties” script was still operative, the New York Times had described the same woman, 85-year-old Sara Hussein Obama, as a “lifelong Muslim” who proclaimed, “I am a strong believer of the Islamic faith.”
Such was the ardor of Obama’s denials that jaws dropped when, once safely elected, he reversed course (again) and embraced his Islamic heritage. “The president himself experienced Islam on three continents,” an administration spokesman announced. “You know, growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father . . .” The “Muslim father” theme was an interesting touch: During the campaign, when the question of Barack Hussein Obama Sr.’s Islamic faith reared its head, the candidate curtly denied it with an air of what’s-that-got-to-do-with-me? finality: “My father was basically agnostic, as far as I can tell, and I didn’t know him.” And, it turns out, the spokesman’s fleeting bit about “growing up in Indonesia” wasn’t the half of it: Obama had actually been raised as a Muslim in Indonesia or, at least that’s what his parents told his schools (more on that in due course).
These twists and turns in the Obama narrative rush to mind when we consider National Review’s leap into the Obama-birth-certificate fray with Tuesday’s editorial, “Born in the U.S.A.”
Full OPINION at: https://www.npr.org/2009/07/31/111412022/national-review-online-suborned-in-the-u-s-a
Jesse Watters declaration of Obama (barry soetoro) definitely not being born in Africa is as sincere as wishing Michael Robinson a “Happy Mothers Day”.
I have been in the Indonesia camp for a long time. Long ago, there was an article about a physical anthropologist (think analyzing skeletons, lots of skeletons) who studied Obama’s features and said that his head shape is more similar to the part of Indonesia near Papua New Guinea. Another thing is that the media has constantly confused things by altering hues. I believe his real lip color is purplish, which is another characteristic of Indonesians.
Meantime, I get to share my CRACKPOT theory on his origin. I think he was born at Greenwich Hospital (date uncertain) to a member of the Rockefeller family who had been in that region of Indonesia. It is a testable idea that can be researched. But it could also be a dead end.