Former President Barack Obama writes in the first volume of his forthcoming memoir, "A Promised Land," that then-reality TV star Donald Trump used racist tactics to gin up white Americans' opposition to him, according to an excerpt of the book obtained by CNN.
Obama writes that Trump used the "birther" conspiracy theory — which falsely claimed that the first Black president was born in Kenya and therefore not a natural born US citizen and ineligible for the presidency — to offer millions of white Americans an "elixir for their racial anxiety."
"It was as if my very presence in the White House had triggered a deep-seated panic, a sense that the natural order had been disrupted," Obama writes. "Which is exactly what Donald Trump understood when he started peddling assertions that I had not been born in the United States and was thus an illegitimate president."
He added, "For millions of Americans spooked by a Black man in the White House, he promised an elixir for their racial anxiety."
The former president writes that prominent right-wing figures, including Trump and 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, helped foment and leverage this racism, which "had migrated from the fringe of GOP politics to the center — an emotional, almost visceral, reaction to my presidency, distinct from any differences in policy or ideology."
Trump spent years spreading the birther lie and finally, in 2011, Obama released his long-form birth certificate. During a White House press conference addressing the issue, Obama said, "We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We've got better stuff to do. I've got better stuff to do."
Even after Obama's birth certificate was made public, Trump continued to express skepticism about the president's citizenship. It was only years later, while running for president in 2016, that Trump acknowledged that Obama was born in the US, but he simultaneously falsely accused Hillary Clinton of creating the "birther controversy." He's never apologized for targeting his predecessor with a racist smear campaign.
