“This decision does not come easily or without regret, especially when my potential candidacy continues to be validated by ranking at the top of the Republican contenders in polls across the country. I maintain the strong conviction that if I were to run, I would be able to win the primary and ultimately, the general election.”

Trump was humiliated when a fed up Obama called upon authorities in Hawaii, where Obama was born, to release his original so-called long form birth certificate and, the same week, mocked Trump at the White House correspondence dinner, pointing out that he was now free to take up other conspiracy theories.

Trump’s release:

After considerable deliberation and reflection, I have decided not to pursue the office of the Presidency. This decision does not come easily or without regret; especially when my potential candidacy continues to be validated by ranking at the top of the Republican contenders in polls across the country. I maintain the strong conviction that if I were to run, I would be able to win the primary and ultimately, the general election. I have spent the past several months unofficially campaigning and recognize that running for public office cannot be done half heartedly. Ultimately, however, business is my greatest passion and I am not ready to leave the private sector.

I want to personally thank the millions of Americans who have joined the various Trump grassroots movements and written me letters and e-mails encouraging me to run. My gratitude for your faith and trust in me could never be expressed properly in words. So, I make you this promise: that I will continue to voice my opinions loudly and help to shape our politician’s thoughts. My ability to bring important economic and foreign policy issues to the forefront of the national dialogue is perhaps my greatest asset and one of the most valuable services I can provide to this country. I will continue to push our President and the country’s policy makers to address the dire challenges arising from our unsustainable debt structure and increasing lack of global competitiveness. Issues, including getting tough on China and other countries that are methodically and systematically taking advantage of the United States, were seldom mentioned before I brought them to the forefront of the country’s conversation. They are now being debated vigorously. I will also continue to push for job creation, an initiative that should be this country’s top priority and something that I know a lot about. I will not shy away from expressing the opinions that so many of you share yet don’t have a medium through which to articulate.

I look forward to supporting the candidate who is the most qualified to help us tackle our country’s most important issues and am hopeful that, when this person emerges, he or she will have the courage to take on the challenges of the Office and be the agent of change that this country so desperately needs

Thank you and God Bless America!

Long seen by Democrats as a stunt candidate, he was increasingly becoming a less-than-serious choice on the right.

Erick Erickson, the founder of right-wing blog site RedState, was set to interview Trump tomorrow. Erickson wasn’t surprised by the news that Trump decided against running.

“I think Donald Trump finally had to take seriously the fact that many didn’t take his bid for the Presidency seriously and he was either going to have to change some minds or change his mind,” he wrote today. “It’s a lot easier to change one mind than many. Likewise, for the first time in a very long time, the maestro of media spin let a story spin out ahead of him beyond his control… Trump does not like story lines he cannot control.”

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In what promises to be one of the stranger political spectacles of the year, a homecoming event is planned Saturday at the Southwest Airlines baggage claim area of Baltimore Washington International Airport. The website set up to support Lakin advises potential attendees that “there are no less than about 20 hotels within a mile or so of the airport” and suggests:

All we ask you to do is bring a home-made poster that says, “Welcome Home Terry.” or “Thank You Terry” or any appropriate messages about the issue. Bring a small US flag if you have one.

…

We will text the coordinators when we deplane so you can all get ready to greet Terry as he descends on the escalator to baggage claim. We need a big hurray and lots of applause (of course). He may say a few words. Then we’ll get him to his luggage, to his car, and home.

Unlike the folks over at WorldNetDaily, who have been enriched by years of pumping up birtherism, Lakin’s commitment to the conspiracy both torpedoed his career and put his family in financial peril. His website notes:

Please consider making a special gift at this critical time. We have been able to provide for the family’s monthly expenses, but contributions have dropped off since the release of the proposed birth document by the Obama administration.

In addition to organizing the baggage claim rally, the Action Fund documented Lakin’s release from Leavenworth today in Kansas:

Jim and Peggy rush across the street and jump out to embrace Terry. They began visiting Terry in prison shortly after his sentencing. They have provided a room in their house for visitors and visited him two to three times a week since then. They are fast friends.

More tears and hugs. We hand Terry a netbook running Skype so he can talk to his family. The children are home waiting for his call. Pili appears on the screen with a huge smile. “Come hear kids, your dad is on the phone!” Holly, Jack, and Andrew rush over. Jack, the three year old takes over the screen making faces and laughing. Lot’s of “We love you, dad,” and “See you tomorrow!” Then a call with Terry’s parents. “Hey mom, this is your son, Terry.” “Wait, let me get your dad on the extension.”

The Colorado Independent called the Action Fund the day the president released his “long form” birth certificate.

“I’m hearing that there are some anomalies on this birth certificate,” said staffer Marco Ciavolino. “The main thing is, even if this birth certificate is legitimate, it doesn’t address the question about whether [Obama] is a natural-born citizen of the United States. This is about the Constitution. The Constitutional question has never been addressed by the courts.”

In his prison diary hosted at the Action Fund site, Lakin continued to defend the birther cause and argue its case. He also regularly lamented the way Leavenworth wasted the time and talents of its inmates.

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More than 17,000 people had joined the social media effort aimed and removing real estate mogul and 2012 potential GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump as driver of the Indianapolis 500 pace car on the event’s 100th anniversary. Although support was slow at first, recent media reports of the group’s creation by Indianapolis attorney Michael Wallack produced a swell of attention Wednesday.

Speculation early Thursday was that officials with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway would be removing Trump as the official pace car driver, but once the news was made official, Trump said he was dumping the event because it could interfere with his other obligations.

A new pace car driver has not yet been announced. Fans are pushing several other celebrities as well as U.S. military personnel as possible replacements. Although a few have mentioned other politicians, there does not appear to be widespread support for anyone associated with politics.

Racing fans took exception to the selection of Trump after the New Yorker began voicing strong criticism of the certificate of live birth produced by President Barack Obama. In addition to the Facebook effort, a few religious-based organization such as an Indiana group of Baptist ministers had come out against Trump’s participation, voicing their opinion that the attacks against Obama’s birth are racially motivated.

“Nothing could be further from the truth,” Trump spokesman Michael Cohen told the IndyStar. “Donald Trump doesn’t have a racist bone in his body.”

Cohen contends that those who created the Facebook page and other movements against Trump were all Obama supporters.

The page, “We Don’t Want Donald Trump to Drive the Indy 500 Pace Car,” began on Facebook April 8, according to Indystar, and currently has nearly 12,000 “likes” by Facebook users — at least 1,000 happening Wednesday. In addition to the “official” page, users have also posted comments directly to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, corporate sponsor IZOD and pace car program sponsor Chevrolet.

“Driving the pace car should not be used as a sound board for some terrible businessman to spew his political aspirations,” said racing fan Chris Hughes, Indianapolis. “Especially with this being the 100th anniversary.”

The speedway announced April 5 that Trump would drive the pace car, which was before Trump was widely considered a part of 2012 presidential field. Officials noted that they have received calls both for and against Trump’s participation.

A local group of Baptist ministers joined the movement Tuesday by issuing a statement that it is deeply concerned about the “petulant, poisonous and racist remarks” made by Trump.

Also, Georgetown University Professor Michael Eric Dyson said recently on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Trump’s comments about Obama’s ability to get into Harvard despite not being a “good student” was racist, as it questioned a black man’s intelligence.

The Baptist Ministers Alliance of Indianapolis and Vicinity called on IMS to immediately rescind its invitation to Trump.

“(We) believe that the leadership and management of the IMS are people of integrity and good will, and we are hopeful that (they) will do right thing,” said Stephen J. Clay, president of the organization.

Supporters of the effort, who will likely attend the race regardless of Trump’s participation, are now considering race-day protest methods if their attempts to oust Trump fail.

“In racing when a driver shouldn’t be on the track we waive a black flag, so the thought has come along, well, if Donald Trump comes by in a pace car how many black flags can be waving?” Michael Wallack, founder of the Facebook movement, told a local Fox affiliate.

“Obama has followed Mohammed, not the religious leader, but the boxer. President Obama has pulled off the perfect Mohammed Ali rope-a-dope,” Tancredo said in a release Friday underlining his alleged prescience on the birther conspiracy as a way to pitch his own radio show.

The release includes this exchange between Tancredo and Colmes last April:

TANCREDO: Now they very well may not want to show it because they want to propagate this whole thing that’s going on about birthers. … They may be doing it for that reason; I don’t know why they don’t want anyone to see it. … They want it propagated because you know –

COLMES: It makes your party look nuts!

TANCREDO: Yeah well maybe that’s why they don’t produce the document.

The president brought out his “long-form” birth certificate Wednesday, he said, to try to dampen discussion in the media about his citizenship, which has been called into question since before he was elected to office and which has generated a cottage industry on the right.

Conservative radio and blogs have hummed with the conspiracy for years. Believers bought billboard ads in cities around the nation demanding to know “Where’s the birth certificate?” Many birthers believe Obama was born in Kenya and that he has paid millions of dollars in a birth-certificate related cover up.

Mainstream Republican leaders have traded on the conspiracy to win favor with far-right voters.

Lat year, Colorado GOP Rep. Cory Gardner in his race to unseat Democrat Betsy Markey gave a typically equivocal response on the stump to a question from the crowd about Obama’s citizenship.

“Do you know for a fact if Barack Obama was born in the United States?” asked an audience member.

“Based on what they’ve shown, what they’ve tried to say, I think the administration is trying to say he was born in this country. I know what everybody else knows.”

Later, a Gardner spokesman told reporters that Gardner believes Obama is “most likely” a citizen.

Tancredo feels Obama the whole time was undertaking shrewd political strategery.

“Tancredo feels this has been nothing more than political covert operations,” said the release.

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Terry Lakin

Greeley native and former Army doctor Terry Lakin made a splash last year when he said he would refuse orders to deploy to Afghanistan until he was presented convincing evidence, including the alleged missing long-form birth certificate, demonstrating that Obama was born in Hawaii. Lakin was the highest ranking member of the active-duty military to subscribe to the so-called birther conspiracy, which holds that the birth records of the president are illegitimate or have been falsified.

Shortly after he declared his intentions to the press, Lakin was met at the Pentagon clinic where he worked by officers who read him his rights and revoked his access to the building. Military investigators also reportedly seized his computer. Lakin was later court martialed, dismissed from the service without pay or benefits and sentenced to six months at the Leavenworth brig.

Lakin has a child and wife who visit him in prison. The Lakin Fund posts a diary Lakin writes of his life in Leavenworth and his continuing belief that Obama has been less than forthright about his citizenship.

Commentators like Colorado conservative talk radio host Peter Boyles see Lakin as an American hero in search of the truth. Others see his story as a contemporary American tragedy, where a military medal winner has thrown away a distinguished career, hypnotized by the anti-Obama theories that have cropped up and been repeated endlessly on the right since Obama took office, including that the president is a closet Muslim and that he was born in Kenya.

In recent weeks, birther speculation has flared again, fueled by the proto-presidential campaign of Donald Trump, who has rehashed the arguments at high-profile media outlets.

Obama said media coverage of birtherism generated by Trump and apparently irresistible to political reporters spurred him to request his birth certificate this month and to post it online. He said the nation faced real challenges but was being distracted by “sideshows and carnival barkers.”

“We do not have time for this kind of silliness,” he said. “We’ve got better stuff to do. I’ve got better stuff to do.”

Few, including the president, believe the release of the certificate will end the debate, especially among true believers like Lakin who have invested so much in the theory.

“I’m hearing that there are some anomalies on this birth certificate,” Ciavolino said today. “I’m waiting for our people to weigh in and then we’ll post something on the site.

“The main thing is, even if this birth certificate is legitimate, it doesn’t address the question about whether [Obama] is a natural-born citizen of the United States. This is about the Constitution. The Constitutional question has never been addressed by the courts.”

Although the term “natural born citizen” is not specifically defined in the Constitution, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution states that anyone born in the U.S. is a citizen.

Ciavolino points to the views expressed by Alan Keyes, who ran against Obama for the Illinois Senate and who argues that some of the Founding Fathers thought the term “natural-born” meant that two parents would have had to be citizens. Keyes will not be satisfied, he said, until the matter is decided in court.

“You go to court and present the evidence. There is an issue of law as well as fact…. You present the evidence, then a determination can be made…The American people want to see the Constitution respected, want them to go through the steps required and look at all the evidence and all the arguments and come to an authoritative judgment, not one that’s all piecemeal, where judges say it’s been Twittered about or politicians declaim or celebrity figures like Trump come out. That is not suitable.”

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The interviewer says Trump’s public discussion of Birtherism’s tenets have “brought a lot of viability and a lot of credibility” to the Birther movement, and asks him why it has helped him rise in 2012 GOP presidential polls. After reciting many of the standard Birther claims, Trump agreed that “it’s been amazing how it’s resonated.” #

“He either has a birth certificate or there’s something on the birth certificate or there is no birth certificate,” Trump concludes. #

The clip: #

“I, for one, believe that we should not be raising that issue in the sense that I think President Obama was born in the United States,” Pawlenty said Tuesday on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program. “I’m not playing into that.”

Indeed, Obama was born in the U.S. and has released his birth certificate publicly. It’s available at a website Organizing for America set up, called FightTheSmears.com, and has been vetted by various news agencies and government officials.

Those critics who say the birth certificate isn’t good enough call for the “long-form birth certificate,” although what the President released is the same document accepted for a citizen to verify their status as native-born for virtually anything.

Pawlenty stopped short of saying Trump wasn’t a serious candidate, and instead adopted a “wait-and-see” approach on if Trump’s latest attempt to stir speculation of a presidential run will culminate in a campaign..

Trump has spent the past week making appearances on various television outlets questioning Obama’s birth certificate and even called for an investigation of Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI).

Prior to Abercrombie’s election, his predecessor, Republican Linda Lingle, also vouched for Obama’s citizenship. A birth announcement also exists from a local Hawaiian newspaper.

“You know what I get a kick out of? The governor of Hawaii says, ‘Oh I remember when he was born 50 years ago.’ I doubt it,” Trump said Monday on Fox & Friends. “I think this guy should be investigated. I doubt he remembers when Obama was born. Give me a break.”

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Rumors have existed since the before the 2008 general election that Obama was foreign-born and, subsequently, would not be eligible to serve as President. Although the Obama campaign released a copy of his birth certificate, such rumors, fueled by a string of dismissed lawsuits, have persisted. Followers of the theory — known as birthers — have moderately few conscripts in the Midwest, yet just last fall copies of a bogus birth certificate were taped to store fronts in Cedar Rapids’ New Bohemia neighborhood.

Trump barreled into the controversy last week during an appearance on ABC’s The View.

During a telephone interview with “Fox & Friends” Monday morning, Trump once again implied that Obama had not released his actual birth certificate.

“Why can’t he produce a birth certificate?” asked Trump.

Video from the Monday morning exchange is reproduced below:

“Governor Huckabee simply misspoke when he alluded to President Obama growing up in ‘Kenya.’ The Governor meant to say the President grew up in Indonesia.

When the Governor mentioned he wanted to know more about the President, he wasn’t talking about the President’s place of birth – the Governor believes the President was born in Hawaii. The Governor would however like to know more about where President Obama’s liberal policies come from and what else the President plans to do to this country – as do most Americans.”

On today’s show, Steve Malzberg also addressed Huckabee’s statement:

“He said he would ask Obama whether or not he believes in Black Liberation Theology…He meant to say Indonesia. He said grew up in Kenya. Slip of the tongue, very easy to make. Not a buffoon slip of the tongue, like Joe Biden—or an ignorant slip of the tongue. People say he was born in Kenya. Whatever. He said Kenya, meant Indonesia.”

The dismissal of Huckabee’s statement as mere sensationalistic uproar over a slip of the tongue doesn’t necessarily hold water, however, if you listen to the original comments.

Huckabee referred to Obama’s growing up in Kenya not once but twice. Huckabee first said, ”His having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, is very different from the average American,” then went on to discuss what he believes to be a negative view of the Brits on Obama’s part in light of his “growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and Kenyan grandfather.” It is common knowledge that the president only met Barack Obama, Sr., once, and never met his paternal grandfather. Malzberg responded bombastically: “He despises the West, he despises the Brits, and I think he could take it all out on Israel, and that’s why he despises Israel. He’s not too thrilled with our history either.”

Full audio of the exchange is below: