What is it about Donald Trump and the GOP field? Trump is a joke, he's been a joke, and he will continue to be a joke. So is he acting as proxy for his rich buddies who will be bankrolling the 2012 election, or is it something else? First we had Herman Cain meeting with him, then Michele Bachmann sidling up next to him for a cozy radio town hall, and now we have Rick Perry going all-out birther.
Via ThinkProgress:
That wasn’t enough, however, to convince Rick Perry. In an interview with PARADE Magazine, Perry said that he recently met with Donald Trump and discussed the issue. Perry stated that he doesn’t “have a definitive answer” on whether Obama was born in the United States or “any idea” if Obama’s birth certificate is real.
Here’s the transcript:
Governor, do you believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States?
I have no reason to think otherwise.That’s not a definitive, “Yes, I believe he”—
Well, I don’t have a definitive answer, because he’s never seen my birth certificate.But you’ve seen his.
I don’t know. Have I?You don’t believe what’s been released?
I don’t know. I had dinner with Donald Trump the other night.And?
That came up.And he said?
He doesn’t think it’s real.And you said?
I don’t have any idea. It doesn’t matter. He’s the President of the United States. He’s elected. It’s a distractive issue.
As Perry sinks in the polls, his strategy gets more and more desperate. After all, birthers represent the fringiest of the fringe of the lunatic GOP, yet here's Perry out pandering to them with the standard non-answer answer. And not only that, but doing it after his little dining experience with Donald Trump!
Orly Taitz' DNA has a big helping of loon in it, so the more Perry leans into her, the less chance he has of being the GOP nominee. And that, I guess, is a good thing.
Perhaps a better question to ask might be why interviewers insist on asking this question. It's ridiculous for Perry to have answered the way he did, but it's even more ridiculous for any interviewer to still give weight to the issue by asking him in the first place.
Liberal media? Yeah, right.
