No, MSM, Clinton Supporters did NOT start birtherism, it was started by GOPer Andy Martin. [View all]
Last edited Fri Sep 16, 2016, 11:01 PM - Edit history (1)
As Chris Hayes told Trump campaign strategist A.J. Delgado on Monday when she repeated the lie that Hillary started the birther movement in 2008, in fact it was a man named Andy Martin, a Republican (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Martin), who started the birtherism campaign against Obama in 2004.
As reported by the NY Times:
Theories about Mr. Obamas background have taken on a life of their own. But independent analysts seeking the origins of the cyberspace attacks wind up at Mr. Martins first press release, posted on the Free Republic Web site in August 2004.
Its general outlines have turned up in a host of works that have expounded falsely on Mr. Obamas heritage or supposed attempts to conceal it, including Obama Nation, the widely discredited best seller about Mr. Obama by Jerome R. Corsi. Mr. Corsi opens the book with a quote from Mr. Martin.
What hes generating gets picked up in other places, said Danielle Allen, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., who has investigated the e-mail campaigns circulation and origins, and its an example of how the Internet has given power to sources we would have never taken seriously at another point in time.
Ms. Allen said Mr. Martins original work found amplification in 2006, when a man named Ted Sampley wrote an article painting Mr. Obama as a secret practitioner of Islam. Quoting liberally from Mr. Martin, the article circulated on the Internet, and its contents eventually found their way into various e-mail messages, particularly an added claim that Mr. Obama had attended Jakartas Muslim Wahhabi schools. Wahhabism is the radical teaching that created the Muslim terrorists who are now waging jihad on the rest of the world.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/us/politics/13martin.html
And while Hillary explicitly told her supporters and campaign staff not to repeat the rumor (
http://www.politicususa.com/2016/09/16/trump-proves-clinton-not-birther.html), this is what Andy Martin did in 2008:
On October 17, 2008, Martin filed a lawsuit against the state of Hawaii calling for the public release of Barack Obama's birth certificate and other vital records.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Martin