If Donald Trump is talking, Donald Trump is lying. He lied – lied – in asserting Friday that Hillary Clinton started the birther movement of which he was the highest profile member. He didn't apologize for leading a racist witch-hunt and shouldn't be permitted to so quickly and mendaciously elide what for years was his signature political issue.

Trump had spent the campaign assiduously stonewalling on his birtherism until he gave a classic non-response – "I'll answer that question at the right time," Trump told The Washington Post's Robert Costa on Thursday. "I just don't want to answer it yet." – and all of a sudden it was a thing again. And with Trump pretending to try to appeal to nonwhite voters, he was forced to address the issue squarely, or at least as squarely as he is capable of doing.

So he blamed it all on Clinton. "Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it," he said. This is – let's be very clear – bullshit.

The Post's Costa called it a "widely debunked claim that Clinton and her campaign had questioned Obama's birthplace in 2008." NBC News' Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann wrote Friday morning that the charge "is untrue. While SUPPORTERS of Clinton stirred this conspiracy on the Internet, Clinton or her campaign NEVER said/suggested/insinuated that Obama wasn't born in the United States." And they cite The Washington Post from last year: "Clinton's campaign, one of the most thoroughly dissected in modern history, never raised questions about the future president's citizenship."

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So no, birtherism doesn't have Hillary Clinton's name on its birth certificate. And no, Trump didn't "finish it" either. To the contrary, he nurtured it and pushed it until President Barack Obama himself finished it by releasing his birth certificate. And even after Obama put out said certificate, Trump continued to question whether it was real for years.

Trump was no seeker of the truth trying to get to the bottom of a mystifying controversy. He was – and is – a con artist hawking whatever lunatic nonsense serves his purpose of the moment.

We'll now undoubtedly be treated to a stream of Republican hacks spreading the lie of the day; and we might even get some on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand press coverage duly noting that while yes Trump was a birther he says Hillary was too and her campaign denies it really who knows where the truth lies. (MSNBC, to its credit, had a chyron just now noting that Trump's claim was false.)

And not for nothing, Trump played the media, duping the cable "news" networks into broadcasting images of a stream of veterans praising him for nearly half an hour before he uttered two dishonest sentences and then refused to take questions. The Huffington Post's Sam Stein summed it up perfectly:

Make no mistake: trump hid from questions with veterans as human shield — Sam Stein (@samsteinhp) September 16, 2016

But let's stay focused on the nut of the issue: Trump spent years touting a racist, crackpot conspiracy. He only walked it back under political duress. And instead of apologizing for doing so, he exhibited pride over his role.

CNN's conservative Trump critic Amanda Carpenter has it exactly right:

Seems like a good folo question would be, "Mr. Trump, why did Obama have to prove his citizenship to you?" — Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) September 16, 2016

Birtherism is back and Trump shouldn't be allowed off the hook for it.

Updated September 19: A Trump campaign staffer reached out to me Friday afternoon with a link to a press release which he argued validated Trump's assertion about Clinton.

The campaign cites two pieces of evidence: First was former Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle saying on CNN that a 2008 campaign aide had forwarded a birther email; the campaign immediately fired the individual and Solis Doyle called Obama's campaign manager to apologize for it.

The second item to which the Trump campaign points is a memo that Clinton strategist Mark Penn wrote arguing in favor of raising the issue of Obama having been raised in Hawaii and Indonesia to paint him as lacking "American roots." Per Politico's Kyle Cheney, the suggestion either caused a near revolt among the staff or was immediately dismissed, but in any case was not acted upon as a campaign strategy. The Cheney piece goes into greater depth on both of these items as well as the actual apparent originator of birtherism (a fringe Illinois political candidate in 2004) and is well worth a read.