Donald Trump's "birtherism" gets a boost from Palin; WH official calls Trump a "sideshow"

Sarah Palin discusses Donald Trump on Fox News, April 10, 2011.

/ Fox

Sarah Palin praised Donald Trump over the weekend for "getting to the bottom of" President Obama's citizenship status, though she said she thinks he was born in Hawaii.

"I appreciate that the Donald wants to spend his resources in getting to the bottom of something that so interests him and many Americans," the former Alaska governor and potential Republican 2012 contender said.

Trump - the business magnate, reality television host, and possible GOP presidential candidate - has made waves in recent weeks by vociferously questioning the president's American citizenship, despite the fact that such "birther"-inspired theories have been long since thoroughly debunked.

In a Saturday interview on Fox News's Justice with Judge Jeanine, Palin stopped short of saying she believed the claims, but said "more power to" Trump if he wanted to use his considerable resources to look into the matter.

"He's not just throwing stones from the sidelines, he's digging in, he's paying for researchers to find out why President Obama would have spent $2 million to not show his birth certificate," Palin told host Jeanine Pirro.

"I think that he was born in Hawaii because there was the birth announcement put in the newspaper - but obviously if there's something there that the president doesn't want people to see on that birth certificate, that he's going to great lengths to make sure that it isn't shown, and that's kind of perplexing for a lot of people," she said.

Meanwhile, on ABC's "This Week" yesterday, White House senior adviser David Plouffe called Trump's recent claims "sideshow behavior" and said he had "zero chance" of being elected president.

"There may be a small part of the country that believes these things, but mainstream Americans think it's a sideshow," Plouffe said, of the birther issue. "And what they want our leaders to do is focus squarely on the issues right in front of us: how we're going to keep growing the economy...how we keep our people safe, how do we make sure we're going to win the future by focusing on things like education and innovation? So that's what they want us to focus on."

He added that he hoped Trump continued to do well in presidential straw polls.

"I saw Donald Trump kind of rising in some polls and given his behavior and spectacle the last couple of weeks, I hope he keeps on rising," Plouffe told said. "There is zero chance that Donald Trump would ever be hired by the American people to do this job."

In a recent interview with NBC News, a former Hawaiian state health official who twice reviewed Mr. Obama's birth certificate called the renewed discussion over the president's birthplace "ludicrous," and affirmed - for the third time - that that his original birth certificate was "real."

"It's kind of ludicrous at this point," said Dr. Chiyome Fukino, former director of Hawaii's Department of Health, told NBC in a phone interview.

Fukino said she has examined the president's "record of live birth" on multiple occasions. (The document circulated on the internet is Mr. Obama's "certificate of live birth," which is a shorter version of the original.) The birth certificate, she said, is kept in a bound volume in Hawaii's Department of Health, and features the signature of the doctor who delivered Mr. Obama.

"It is real, and no amount of saying it is not, is going to change that," Fukino said, in 2009, after the second time she examined the document.

Fukino said that the "certification of live birth" is the standard document given to any Hawaii resident who requests his or her birth certificate.

"What he got, everybody got," Fukino said. "He put out exactly what everybody gets when they ask for a birth certificate."

Joshua Wisch, a spokesman for the Hawaii attorney general's office, told NBC that Hawaii law does not permit the release of such "vital records" as the original "record of live birth" to anyone, including that person whose birth is in question.

"It's a Department of Health record and it can't be released to anybody," Wisch told NBC. He also said the original document could not be photocopied. Obama could personally view his record of live birth at the Hawaii health department, but the only record that can be obtained and/or released to the public is the "certification of live birth" - which is the document that various sources have obtained and published online.

[san850]

READ THIS: http://factcheck.org/2011/04/donald-youre-fired/

These birthers must really have a problem recognizing facts and truth....or perhaps just choose not to because of their unbridled hatred for our President.

[imnho]

The whole question of Obama's birth is just people who hate him because of race. Its come to the point of being absurd. The state of Hawaii has checked and rechecked several times the status of his birth is not in question. The FBI checks out people who have a serious chance of winning the presidency. If you want to disagree with his politics that fine,but the personnel attacks on his citizens are a very poo reflection on the people making the attacks.

The fact that Donald Trump is saying this indicates he lacks the judgement to be president.

[cardamom1]

It seems more people like him because of his race than dislike him because of his race. This guy is on track to put 200 nuclear power plants in the US! How exactly does this fall in line with the whole liberal eco agenda? What is it exactly that Obama has actually accomplished that makes him so darn irreplaceable?

[chrisdjax]

Race is not an issue in this. Transparency is. Remember, among the many things that Obama campaigned on was transparency. Now, I'm not a birther and I am sick and tired of being labeled one by numbnuts who are just out to argue. My point is why on earth...would you just not get a long form birth certificate to end this? Why? You or I would do that, it's not difficult...it's not unusual. Don't throw the BS excuses of "Hawaiian law" etc...it isn't Hawaiian law. It is policy. Rather recent policy to where they only issue short form certificates....well why is that? I don't know but in any other state it's not like pulling teeth to get. This is a President who was elected in a landslide, and still you are trying to pull the race card? Ridiculous. Why doesn't he just end this? I'm just asking...asking is never unreasonable.

[noloyalisti]

But remember that these are Republi CONS for which truth and reason has no bearing. Remember their reasoning for knowing why there were WMDs in Iraq: we can't find them so that proves they exist. It is kind of their reasoning about God as well so the shoe fits.

[margroks]

Morons. Palina and Trump both. There is NO evidence that Obama is not a citizen! It's nonsense and Trump knows it; he's just counting on people buying into his garbage.

Plus the idea that Americans would even consider having this rude jerk as president is appalling in its own right.

[idiotforreading]

Obama's mother was a US citizen. He could have been born on the moon and would still be a US citizen. What part of this do these morons not understand??

[idiotforreading]

Trumps a moron and Palin is an idiot. They go together like morons and idiots. Idiot, moron.... moron idiot. We are all screwed, the world is going down a toilet.

[noloyalisti]

Why on earth do we continue to glorify these moron, ridiculous wacko Republi CONS and Tea Bag KKKlanners? Are we really that uneducated and stupid?

[iamproteus]

"Are we really that uneducated and stupid?"

Sadly, there ARE more than a few that are.

[noloyalisti]

What a waste of good air, these wacko extremists Palin and Trup. Palin is so stupid she probably doesn't know that Hawaii is an American state. Trump is just another rich airheaded freak show.

[TobyPogi]

The FBI and the CIA ,examined every person who would run for public office, they found nothing to disqualified Mr. Obama. Mr. 007 Trump. is putting himself in a very embarrasing situation, I am pretty sure Mr. Obama just laughing and call these stupid Morons Idiots.

[mollydtt]

I'm not sure that an endorsement by Palin is a positive development.
Palin and Trump are both not too bright.