In Which Rudy Giuliani Lies And Lies And Lies About Donald Trump's Birther Sh*t

Although Donald Trump has yet to fully come out and say that he believes Barack Obama was indeed born in the United States -- and now says only "I don't talk about it" -- former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani is insisting that Trump totally does believe that Obama is a citizen and has totally believed that for many years now, ever since he saw the birth certificate.

In an appearance on "Hardball," Chris Matthews asked Giuliani if he, like Mike Pence and Ben Carson, would say that he believes President Obama was a citizen of the United States, and Giuliani was all “I confirm that and Donald Trump now confirms that.” Matthews attempted to pin him down to when Trump actually said he believed that, which prompted Giuliani to lie and say "two, three years ago" and then "three, four, five years ago."

 (Did we mention this is a lie?) 

Giuliani then started insisting that the only reason Donald Trump had believed the birther conspiracy is because Hillary Clinton was totally pushing it, which Chris Matthews had to point out was not true. He then insisted her campaign pushed it with her permission -- also not true! Matthews attempted to explain this to him, but instead of calming down for a second and listening, he just kept screaming about how it wasn't fair that they weren't talking about the very important issue of Hillary Clinton's emails.

Here is the video of the segment, though unless you are really turned on by watching two old white guys yell really loudly and somewhat incomprehensibly over one another, we recommend turning the volume down!

According to Politifact/reality, the conspiracy theory was started by a random supporter of Clinton's, and never embraced or even acknowledged by her or her campaign. The fact that Giuliani is insisting that this was the case? The fact that Donald Trump is insisting this was the case? Well, it's just about as absurd as insisting that President Obama is a Secret Kenyan. There really isn't much difference! Either way, it's believing something that is categorically untrue and based on exactly zero evidence, and that is a very stupid thing to do!

The problem isn't just whether or not Donald Trump still believes this crap, or whether he considers -- as Matthews put it -- Obama to be the legitimate president of the United States. The problem is his history of believing stupid things for which there is no evidence. Giuliani, clearly, also suffers from this problem.

Not only did Donald Trump push the whole birther thing, he also believes vaccines cause autism, that climate change isn't real, that Ted Cruz's dad was involved in the Kennedy assassination, that Obama has a SECRET MUSLIM RING, a stupid chain email lie about how there was once an American General who massacred Muslims using bullets dipped in pig's blood because he was super tough and great, and he praised Alex Jones as a person with an "amazing reputation."

Speaking of which! Alex Jones is not only a Trump supporter, but an official advisor to the campaign! Using Giuliani logic, this means that the Trump campaign started the conspiracy that the United States government has been putting chemicals in children's juiceboxes in order to turn them gay. However, at this point, I don't think there's a dumb conspiracy you can run past Trump that he wouldn't believe. Which is definitely a quality we'd all value in the next President of the United States.

[ Talking Points Memo ]