Barack Obama was born in Kenya
The assertion that former President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore not eligible to be president, led to what became known as the “birther campaign” in the United States. “Birthers” did not believe that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii which therefore meant that he was not a U.S. citizen. They claimed that he was born in Kenya instead. It became a recurring political issue beginning when Obama was first running for president in 2008. Some Republicans, most notably President Donald Trump have said that Hillary Clinton was the first person behind these accusations and that they began after she had fallen behind Obama in the race for the Democratic nomination.
In a speech in Washington, Hillary Clinton refuted Trump’s allegation, saying that “Mr. Trump had founded his campaign on this ‘outrageous lie’ and that he ‘owed Obama and the American people an apology’.” In a tweet, Hillary Clinton wrote that “Trump has spent five years peddling a racist conspiracy aimed at undermining the first African-American president.”
In April 2011, Trump challenged Obama to show his birth certificate to prove his citizenship. A few weeks later the state of Hawaii released Obama’s official long-form birth certificate. Then a number of weeks later, at the annual White House correspondent’s dinner, Obama used the release of his official birth certificate to poke fun at Trump, who was in the audience during his speech. Obama said that he hoped that the matter could be put to rest and that Trump could “finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like, did we fake the moon landing?”
However, Trump was not quite finished with the matter. On August 6, 2012, Trump tweeted, “An ‘extremely credible source’ has called my office and told me that @BarackObama’s birth certificate is a fraud.” Later, while running for president, Trump finally conceded that he believed that Obama was born in Hawaii.