Faded, former-media darling Katie Couric hosted Republican Senator Ted Cruz for a full-hour to discuss a wide range of issues Monday. The left-wing anchor, who is now perched at a place called Yahoo!, introduced Cruz as a historic candidate — potentially the first American president to be born in Canada. Later in the interview, she questioned Cruz on his citizenship.
The look on Couric’s smug face when he correctly reminded her that it was the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2008 that birthed the anti-Obama Birther movement, is priceless.
It all starts at right around the 25 minute mark.
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CRUZ: “You know it’s interesting, the whole Birther thing was started by the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2008 against Barack Obama…”
This is a fact, one even admitted to by the left-wing Politico:
Where did this idea come from? Who started it? And is there a grain of truth there?
The answer lies in Democratic, not Republican politics, and in the bitter, exhausting spring of 2008. At the time, the Democratic presidential primary was slipping away from Hillary Clinton and some of her most passionate supporters grasped for something, anything that would deal a final reversal to Barack Obama. …
The original smear against Obama was that he was a crypto-Muslim, floated in 2004 by perennial Illinois political candidate and serial litigant Andy Martin. Other related versions of this theory alleged that Obama was educated in an Indonesian “madrassa” or steeped in Islamist ideology from a young age, and the theories began to spread virally after Obama appeared on the national stage – to the casual observer, from nowhere – with his early 2007 presidential campaign. …
Then, as Obama marched toward the presidency, a new suggestion emerged: That he was not eligible to serve.
That theory first emerged in the spring of 2008, as Clinton supporters circulated an anonymous email questioning Obama’s citizenship.
“Barack Obama’s mother was living in Kenya with his Arab-African father late in her pregnancy. She was not allowed to travel by plane then, so Barack Obama was born there and his mother then took him to Hawaii to register his birth,” asserted one chain email that surfaced on the urban legend site Snopes.com in April 2008.
Has been Katie Couric can look as annoyed and exasperated as she wants; that does not change history.
I should add that the whole hour is worth watching. Cruz is superb throughout.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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