Trump Campaign Mgr: Hillary Resorted to Desperate Birtherism Tactics in 2008

STEPHANOPOULOS: One of the — one of the issues the African American community has had with Mr. Trump is this whole birther issue. He’s only been asked about it once since that press conference last week.  Do you expect the issue to come up tomorrow night? And if it does, will Mr. Trump apologize to President Obama?

CONWAY: So Donald Trump stated very clearly a week ago Friday how he feels about this issue. He said these three very crisp, very important things. Those are his words. And I expect that he would say them again in the debate. I don’t know if it will come up. That’s up to Lester Holt and I guess Secretary Clinton if they feel like raising that. But this is an issue that Donald Trump has addressed very recently in his own words. So —

(CROSSTALK)

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no apology?

CONWAY: — that’s a very personal thing. What Donald Trump — what Donald Trump has said is the people who raised this at the beginning should apologize. He wasn’t running against Hillary Clinton in 2008. He wasn’t running against Barack Obama in 2008 in a very vicious, nasty primary for president.  That was Hillary Clinton. And according to —

STEPHANOPOULOS: But Hillary Clinton and her campaign did not bring this up.

CONWAY: Really? The volunteer guy in Iowa who then was fired, Patti Solis Doyle telling Wolf Blitzer last week, yes, it started with him?  People — the McClatchy former news chief in D.C., saying that Sid Blumenthal came and asked him to go and investigate Obama’s ties in Kenya? And McClatchy actually sent a reporter to Kenya. Donald Trump was busy being a successful businessman that year. It was Hillary Clinton who, again, who never saw Obama coming. So I guess they resorted to desperate tactics.

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