Thread by @DavidNeiwert

1) A (video) lesson in recent history:

Donald Trump's first big splash politics came in April 2011, on ABC's The View: He pissed off everyone by promoting the hoax "Birther" theories about President Obama's birth certificate. Fox's Greta Van Susteren had first dibs that night.

2) Next up was Bill O’Reilly. This interview gave us an important preview of Trump as an Islamophobe: “We have a Muslim problem in the world.”

3) They talked about the birth certificate too, naturally. Trump lied, claiming the “live birth” certificate Obama originally provided was insufficient (it was, in fact, sufficient proof of citizenship for every other Hawaii-born politician before and after).

4) Sean Hannity hosted a panel discussion on how wonderful Trump was. When Jerry Springer tried to point out that the whole Birther theory was outrageously racist, the rest of the panel jumped all over him to hush him.

5) When Hannity finally interviewed Trump, he waxed reverential to the nearly orgasmic. He became Trump’s biggest fanboy that night. It looked like everyone had to towel off afterwards.

6) Trump proclaimed himself the political personification of the Tea Party about this time. This was exactly right, since that faction had become a conduit for far-right conspiracism and populist authoritarianism.

7) Finally, out of exasperation because the insane and inane birth-certificate “controversy” was taking up too much political bandwidth in D.C., Obama asked Hawaii officials to release his long-form birth certificate.

8) Trump promptly claimed credit for it, of course, and said he was “very proud of himself.” Of course he was.

9) In the same press conference, he refused to say anything was settled regarding President Obama. He then proceeded to suggest that Obama was hiding something by failing to release his grade transcripts.

10) The Kicker: While Trump claimed (above) that “education has always meant a lot to me,” in reality Trump went through a massive and expensive effort to hide his own (terrible) grades, including threatening his alma mater.

washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/…

11) Meanwhile, the Birthers of course were the opposite of discouraged by Obama’s "long form" release—it just gave them a new plaything. Alex Jones went nuts, of course. The consensus: Fake!

Here’s Pam Geller going on Fox News to find evidence of fraud in the new “long form.”

12) Three days after the release, Obama himself had the opportunity to roast Trump himself at the White House Correspondents Association’s annual dinner, at which roasting is the grand tradition. Donald was not pleased.

13) The final line—“And these are the kinds of decisions that would keep me up at night. Well handled, sir. Well handled.”—had a cutting irony to it: Obama himself that night had ordered the raid that would capture and kill Osama bin Laden.

obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2016/05/0…

14) Indeed, Trump’s humiliation that night is widely regarded—though he himself adamantly denies it—as the event that triggered his decision to run for the presidency seriously in 2016.

washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-…

15) He made an appearance before the Spring Mountain Republican Women's club in Las Vegas a few days later in which he was amazingly foulmouthed, dropping F-bombs everywhere -- along with a frightening preview of what actually became his China policy.

16) He made a brief audio-only Fox News appearance a few days later, which gave him an opportunity to whine that people who criticized people like himself were “bad for the country.” He was cryptic about his presidential plans for 2012.

17) A few days after that, he announced without fanfare—simply by issuing a statement—that he had decided not to run for the 2012 GOP nomination. It was a good day for America, but nobody knew it.

The bell, apparently, had however been rung for 2016.

politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/16/bre…

18) Lesson 1: Trump's political career indeed always had a nakedly racist conspiracy theory as its foundation. Lesson 2: Trump was always, always, the creation of Fox News.

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