Birtherism is what happens when someone claims that a President of the U.S. wasn’t born in the United States. It’s usually used as a way to discredit the person running for President so that people disbelieve everything they say. This happened to Barack Obama in the 2008 U.S. Presidential campaign.
While many people thought it was true, none of the claims were proven. For example, someone said that Obama had not been born in the U.S., which would render his Presidential campaign moot. They also claimed that, at the time of his birth, his father was not a citizen of the United States. Both of these things must be true to become an elected President in the country. Though not as prevalent, some people also claimed that Barack Obama was hiding the fact that he was a Muslim. These theories came about because of his middle name, ‘Hussein.’ They coined him Barack “Saddam Hussein” Obama.
We now know that none of these things are true. Yet, some still believe the conspiracy, as people are wont to do. It can be fun to contemplate what would have happened if the claims were right. However, it’s also important to understand what tribulations the 2008 President had to deal with because of these false accusations.
These 10 things are important facts and points to consider about that interference. It shows that people are likely to believe anything. However, it also shows just how low Clinton aids could go to try to discredit President Barack Obama.
10Barack Obama’s Early Life (Birth and Education)
Sometimes, it easier to debunk myths by going to the beginning of the story. In this case, that would be Barack Obama’s birth and childhood. The primary issue is that most people have expressed doubts that he was eligible to be the President of the U.S. or have rejected details that have been proven.
Ann Dunham went to the Kapi’olani Maternity and Gynecological Hospital on August 4, 1961, and gave birth to Barack Obama. This hospital was renamed the Kapi’olani Medical Center for Children and Women. It’s located in Honolulu, Hawaii. Barack’s mother was originally from Kansas, and her husband was from a Colony in Kenya called Nyang’oma Kogelo in the Nyanza Province. He gave his son his name. Because his father (Barack Obama Sr.) was not from the US, his immigration file contained information about his son. It stated clearly that the 2008 President had been born in Hawaii.
In 1964, Obama’s parents got divorced. He and his mother stayed in Hawaii while he attended kindergarten from 1966 to 1967 at the Noelani Elementary School. During that time, his mother got remarried to Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian student. Once his step-father was finished with school, he took his new family to Jakarta, Indonesia. There, Obama went to a Catholic school and then transferred to a public elementary school.
Students there often referred to Barack Obama as Barry and teachers frequently used his step-father’s surname of Soetoro. At 10 years old, Barack chose to live with his maternal grandparents in Honolulu and has lived in the U.S. since 1971.
9Why the Rumors Were Started?
Back in 2004, there were rumors relating to Obama’s religion. It started during his campaign for U.S. Senate. Andy Martin – an Illinois political candidate – released a press release. There were also many internet rumors flying around at the time.
Conservative websites quickly picked up on the rumors that Obama had been born in Kenya and then flown to Hawaii to establish citizenship. This started in March of 2008. Nothing concrete was ever said, but there were hints that this might disqualify Barack from becoming President.
In April of the same year, Hillary Clinton supporters circulated chain emails through anonymity that repeated the same thing. One Iowa campaign volunteer was fired after the story was out. The chain emails and other correspondence questioned many things, including Barack’s birth certificate, religion, and origin.
Then, in June of 2008, Jim Geraghty made a suggestion of Obama releasing his birth certificate to disprove the claims. Geraghty worked for the National Review Online and believed that by showing his birth certificate, Obama could debunk the rumors. At the time, the allegations were that Barack’s middle name was not Hussein, but rather Muhammad. Also, conspiracies circulated that Barack Obama Sr. wasn’t his biological dad and that his actual name was Barry and not Barack.
Philip J. Berg was part of the Democratic State Committee in Pennsylvania. In August of 2008, he brought a lawsuit against Barack claiming that Obama had been born in Mombasa, Kenya. It was unsuccessful. Most of the rumors were started anonymously, so no one really knows who conjured them up. Of course, conspiracy theorists have their picks, including Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama himself.
8How President Obama Reacted?
Of course, there wasn’t much that Barack Obama could do at the time. He chose to release his birth certificate to the public. This was to prevent more rumors from starting and assure everyone that he was, indeed, born in America.
Through his Presidential campaign, Barack posted an image of his birth certificate on a website called “Fight the Smears.” It was just a scan of a regular laser-printer document. However, it was certified by the Hawaii Department of Health in 2007.
Technically, it was a Certification of Live Birth, which is also called a short-form certificate. It includes less information. The campaign chose to do this to protect some of Obama’s private information. Plus, the Certificate of Live Birth is no longer issued in Hawaii and hasn’t been since 2001.
The actual record of live birth, which was partially typed and handwritten, was created in 1961 when Barack was born. It’s currently located in a file cabinet in a bound volume of the Department of Health in Hawaii. When the certificate was released to the website, his campaigners claimed that the rumors weren’t about a specific piece of paper. Instead, it was a ploy to manipulate others into thinking that Obama wasn’t an American citizen.
Jim Geraghty applauded Obama for taking such corrective action. He claimed that, unless there was a significant conspiracy that reached into the Department of Health in Hawaii, the document was original and correct. Still, people wonder about the validity because it was not a “long-form” record but a “short-form” version. Some people believe that the certification is not as legitimate as the certificate.
7Birth Certificates Weren’t the End
With all that proof just staring you in the face, you’d probably give up on your idea that Barack Obama wasn’t a U.S. citizen. That’s what most of the world did. However, those conspiracy theorists just couldn’t drop it.
They had more questions than ever before. Some claimed that the certificate was forged using Adobe Photoshop or something similar. These people stated that there wasn’t a stamped seal from the state. Therefore, these conspirators demanded that Obama release the original birth certificate from 1961.
Jerome Corsi was one of the many that claimed the birth certificate was fake and false. He stated that there were clear Photoshop watermarks. Because the campaign refused to produce the original birth certificate, Obama was not a U.S. citizen.
However, a fact-checking site called FactCheck.org tested the hard copy that the campaign posted on the website. Staff members had touched, seen, photographed, and examined the original birth certificate. They all concluded that it met all of the requirements to prove American citizenship. These staff members also went on to say that there was either a signature or raised seal on the documentation. However, they did not specify which was included or if both were available.
Corsi continued casting doubt on the birth certificate, even as of 2019. He will tell anyone who listens that he will only stop doubting when he sees the Kenyan birth records from 1961. One of his many issues with the document is that it lists Obama’s race as “African-American,” which wasn’t the term used in the 60s.
6Born in Kenya or Not Born in Hawaii (Both Were Claimed)
Though incorrect, a popular claim at the time was that Barack’s father’s stepmother, Sarah Obama, spoke with an Anabaptist Bishop in a transatlantic telephone conversation. In it, she said she was there when Barack was born in Kenya. The explanation of this story was that the tape cut out in the middle of their conversation. Sarah hadn’t finished and later clarified the meaning. At that time, she stated that Obama hadn’t been born in Mombasa, but in America.
During an interview in 2007 with the Chicago Tribune, Sarah Obama offered more information. She stated that just six months after Ann Dunham and her stepson were married, she got a letter at her Kenyan home announcing the birth of her step-grandson, Barack Hussein Obama.
With so many people focused on where he was born, most people still believe that he wasn’t born in Hawaii. The Hawaiian certification of live birth might have been forged, according to them.
However, the point remains that, regardless of where you are born, you cannot list that you were born elsewhere. For example, if you were born in Bali, you could get a certificate from Hawaii, claiming that you were born in Bali. Yet, you can’t get certification that you were born in an American state in which you were not. Everything has to be verified by the state before any information appears on the birth certificate.
5Obama Lost His U.S. Citizenship
Though not as popular as other conspiracy theories, some believe that Obama might have obtained citizenship in Indonesia when he lived there as a kid. When he became a citizen there, he lost U.S. citizenship.
This is usually impossible, though not entirely. People can choose to renounce citizenship in one country to become a citizen in another. However, dual citizenship is often available and offered to the person in question.
When Obama went to Pakistan in 1981, there was supposedly a ban so that United States passport holders couldn’t enter the country. That means Barack would have had to use his non-US passport (the one from Indonesia). This is a feeble attempt to prove that he was no longer an American citizen, and it doesn’t hold up.
For one, there was no ban in Pakistan at the time. Viewing travel advisories from the U.S. State Department in 1981 shows clearly that people from America (with valid passports) traveling to Pakistan was legal at the time.
Here is the kick in the head for conspiracy theorists everywhere: Barack Obama might be a citizen of Indonesia and Kenya. That doesn’t matter. He could become a citizen in every country in the world, and he would still hold U.S. citizenship unless he were to denounce it in writing. To go along with that, Obama does not have a passport for any other country. Of course, that doesn’t matter now because when he became President, he automatically had the security clearance to go wherever he had to go.
4Many People Thought Obama Was a Secret Muslim
Barack Obama always declared himself a Christian and worshipped primarily in Christian churches, and communed with Christian ministers/pastors. Yet, many Americans still believed that he was a Muslim. Almost 18 percent of Americans in 2008 believed Obama to be a Muslim. However, most of that was concocted out of dislike for the Democratic Presidential candidate and his many policies.
Some believed that he could be the Antichrist because his political rise was similar to one biblical tale of such. Others swore that he took the U.S. Senate oath on a Koran instead of a Bible.
All three claims were debunked. There is clear evidence that Barack Obama is a Christian. Though he wasn’t raised in a particular faith, he became a Christian in his 20s while working in Chicago as a community organizer. Obama always spoke forthrightly about his call to Christ. He viewed it a choice rather than an epiphany. Barack also said that his questions didn’t disappear, but when he knelt beneath the cross at a South Side church, he felt God’s spirit.
It’s also possible to find a variety of documentation about Obama’s faith life and church membership. He always carried a Christian Bible with him on his Senate campaign trail in 2004. It sat right beside him in his SUV, and Barack could be seen reading passages frequently. The issue most people have with his supposedly Muslim ties is that his father’s side has Muslim ancestors. Plus, Barack’s middle name is Muslim, as well.
3Law Changes Because of the Mishap
Because of the fiasco with Obama, Republican legislators (both federal and state), saw fit to require future presidential candidates to have to release copies of their official birth certificates before becoming a candidate. Some legislators went so far as to lend their support to the litigation surrounding Obama about the birth certificate authentication.
Many groups and individuals filed federal and state lawsuits to have President Obama disqualified from standing as President or being confirmed for Presidency. Some of the suits demanded that Obama release more information about his citizenship.
By the end of 2008, about 17 lawsuits had officially been filed. All of them challenged Barack’s eligibility for a variety of states. These included Hawaii, Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Connecticut, Washington, and Texas. However, none of the suits made it to the Supreme Court; they were all rejected in a lower court.
After the election and swear-in of Barack Obama as President, three suits were filed and dismissed almost immediately by the Supreme Court of the US.
Arizona was the first state to pass a bill requiring Presidential candidates to prove U.S. citizenship before that person’s name can appear on the ballot. This included President Obama. Therefore, technically, he should have sent the information to Arizona when he ran for President a second time, though he did not.
2Obama’s Social Security Number Was Stolen (or Was It)
Primarily, the most popular conspiracy theories were that Obama was a secret Muslim or that he wasn’t born in the United States. However, a lesser-known controversy was that Obama’s SSN (Social Security Number) was issued to a person who was born in Connecticut and not Hawaii.
While the conspiracy is false, there is a bit of truth to this. Of course, it was blown out of proportion, as so many conspiracy theories are. Social Security Numbers issued in 1972 through 2011 were linked to geography – specifically a ZIP code for the person’s mailing address.
At initial glance, Barack Obama’s SSN does look like it is linked to the state of Connecticut. However, Obama didn’t register with the Social Security office until he was 16 years old. This was common during that time, and children weren’t automatically logged after birth until the late 1970s.
During that age, he was living with his maternal grandparents in Honolulu. Its ZIP code is 96814, which is just one digit away from the Connecticut ZIP code 06814. In all probability, it was likely only a clerical error.
Of course, some people worry that he might have used someone else’s Social Security Number. While that could have happened, it is likely an error in public records where someone wrote sloppily or miswrote their SSN. Therefore, they are automatically and incorrectly linked to someone else in the same database.
1Barack Obama Often Jokes about It
What else could Obama do? He cracked jokes about it to show that he wasn’t taking the conspiracy theories to heart. In fact, that might have been the reason he won the Presidential election. No one could say that he was throwing a fit, getting upset, and threatening people who said these horrible things.
He laughed it off because he knew they were incorrect. Barack was definitely of the mindset that he knew the truth, and nothing else mattered. Obama chose to focus solely on his policies throughout his campaign. Quite often, he added jokes in his speeches, saying that people can question and tear apart his plans without having to know his citizenship or faith.
In an interview with Brian Williams in August 2010 (after he became President), he stated that he couldn’t spend his waking life with a birth certificate on his forehead.
Other examples of him joking about the theories came in 2011 when at the Gridiron Dinner. He referred to “Born in the U.S.A.,” a Bruce Springsteen song, multiple times. When asked why, he said, “Some things bear repeating.”
As you can see, Barack Obama knew from the beginning that these ploys were just that. They were trying to take away from his policies and political prowess to thwart his efforts. However, they ended up failing because he won the Presidency and held the role for two full terms.
Conclusion
Are you on team Obama, or were you part of the conspiracy theories? At this point, the question is hardly moot. Though Obama isn’t President anymore, he will always hold the title of Honorable President Barack Obama or Mr. President Obama. Every single conspiracy theory mentioned here (and others that didn’t quite make it to the 10 things you should know about his conspiracy) was debunked. Therefore, it goes without saying that he was one of the most controversial Presidential campaigners and as the POTUS.
With so many people focused on whether he was Muslim, a U.S. citizen, or stole someone’s SSN, it’s amazing that he was able to talk about policy. You may not have agreed with everything he said or did, but do know that the 2008 and partly the 2012 candidacy for President was an eventful ride.
While most Americans have forgotten about the conspiracy theories, they still live on. Most theorists are never going to give up, even though he hasn’t been President in over five years. It could go on for decades, and there will always be that handful of people who claim something else or bring up old, debunked conspiracies.
Still, you can’t keep a good man down, as the saying goes. Former President Obama knows where he came from and what faith he has, so that is all he cares about. He will, even now, joke about those theories and make light of them because they are a part of his past. However, he doesn’t let them define him.
