Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Friday hit back at media attempts to discredit him by bringing up previous “birther” claims.

“Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the ‘Birther’ controversy,” Trump said at a speech in Washington DC.

“I finished it. I finished it – you know what I mean. President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now we want to get back to making America strong and great again. Thank you.”

On Thursday, Trump hinted at what he meant to CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo, telling her his planned statement would once and for all lay the controversy behind the “birther” rumors to rest.

“I’m going to be making a major statement on this whole thing and what Hillary did,” Trump told Bartiromo. “But no, she is the one that started it and she was unable or incapable of finishing it. That’s the way it worked out. But I got him to release his birth certificate. So we will have a big statement and I hope you’re going to be watching.”

The Trump campaign had released a statement Thursday night saying, “Having successfully obtained President Obama’s birth certificate when others could not, Mr. Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States.”

In 2011 Trump admitted to being “skeptical” about Obama’s birth origins, and campaigned for the Commander in Chief to release his birth certificate to the public – which he did – but an in-depth report from Breitbart News shows one of Hillary’s 2008 presidential campaign strategies was to throw Obama’s birth origins into question.

Hillary further stoked the issue in an interview with 60 Minutes, in which she told Steve Kroft that Obama was not Muslim “as far as I know.”

In 2008, Obama also accused Hillary Clinton’s campaign of sending a photo of himself dressed in Muslim garb to the widely trafficked DrudgeReport.com, which published it prominently as its main headline.

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