In the span of just a few weeks, real estate mogul turned reality television star turned Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump went from dipping his toe in the birther pool to diving right into the deep end and claiming that he’s “starting to wonder” whether President Barack Obama was born in the United States.
So we figured it’d be good to ask the Tea Partiers in attendance for the “Continuing Revolution” rally on Capitol Hill on Thursday if speaking out on the issue boosted Trump’s presidential campaign.
For the most part, their message was go, Donald, go.
Elizabeth Johnson, a resident of Virginia said that “Donald Duck would be better” than “this joker in the White House” and that “Donald Trump would be fine.” She appreciated Trump speaking out about the birther issue.
“Why not, if you have it and you’re honest about it, show it. But you know why I think he doesn’t want to show it? It says religion and it says Muslim because his father was one, and that’s what he doesn’t want people to know,” Johnson said.
“I think Donald Trump’s serious, if you’ve got Donald Trump’s kinda money you can be serious,” Mark Lloyd, the chairman of the Virginia Federation of Tea Parties, told TPM in an interview. “If you think about it, that birth certificate issue has been around since before the 2008 election, and it’s a question that’s out there that hasn’t been answered, and I don’t know if it ever will.”
But Lloyd said the Tea Party movement isn’t “a bunch of birthers” and that there were “bigger fish to fry.”
Charles Hoffman of West Virginia said he likes “what Donald Trump is saying, he’s saying what the others wouldn’t say,” including about Obama’s birth certificate.
John Balazic of Maryland didn’t seem all that excited about Trump as a candidate, but said that the birth certificate was an important issue.
“He’s about as documented as most of the illegals in this country right now,” Balazic said. “So unless he can come forward and prove that we’re all wrong, he should be considered an illegal alien, his administration illegal, it should be voided immediately and hopefully we can save what’s left of this country.”
Check out our compilation video below.
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