TRUMP

50 ANATOMY OF A MONSTROSITY
two forms of Obama’s birth certificate available, continued to press
the issue of Obama’s place of birth. In 2012, he said that an “extremely
credible source” had told him that Obama’s birth certificate was “a
fraud.” 178 He cast doubt on whether the birth certificate was really a
birth certificate: “Was it a birth certificate? You tell me. Some people
say that was not his birth certificate. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t.
I’m saying I don’t know. Nobody knows.” 179 He even dabbled in the
completely conspiratorial, at one point tweeting: “How amazing, the
State Health Director who verified copies of Obama’s ‘birth certificate’
died in plane crash today. All others lived.” 180
Trump also developed an obsession with Obama’s college records.
He had already publicly called for hackers to “please hack Obama’s
college records” in order to determine whether they said he was born
in the United States, or qualified for some form of international scholarship.
181 But Trump went further, and implied that Obama might
not have actually qualified for admission to the Ivy League schools he
attended. Trump suggested that Obama had been a “terrible student”
whose grades weren’t good enough to get him into Columbia and
Harvard. “Let him show his records,” Trump said. 182 Trump had also
alleged that none of Obama’s classmates could remember who he was,
saying “the people that went to school with him, they never saw him,
they don’t know who he is. It’s crazy.” 183 (Scores of people who went
to school with Obama begged to differ on the subject.)
Trump’s campaign against Obama was unusual, even for Trump. It
was Trump’s first sustained political activity of any kind, and he even
indicated that it was part of the reason he was considering running
for president. It was unclear why Trump chose this particular issue on
which to take a major stand, considering that it was largely the stuff of
the conspiratorial fringe, and there was no evidence at all to support
any of Trump’s suspicions. One can speculate, as many have, that the
issue of race hovered in the background. Trump implied that Obama
was admitted to Harvard only due to affirmative action policies, that