“ " [Birtherism] started with Hillary Clinton ’ ' s campaign,” Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” | AP Photo Conway: Birther theory started with Clinton campaign

The theory that President Barack Obama was actually not born in the United States started in Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president in 2008, Donald Trump’s campaign manager argued in an interview that aired Sunday, two days after Trump himself conceded that Obama was born in the United States.

“This started with Hillary Clinton’s campaign, No. 1 ,” Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “No. 2, it was Donald Trump who put the issue to rest when he got President Obama to release his birth certificate years later. And, No. 3, he said that ‘President Obama was born in this country, period.’”


The comment by Conway came two days after Trump, at a news conference, conceded that Obama is an American citizen. During the 2012 presidential campaign Trump was one of the most high-profile figures suggesting that Obama was not, in fact, born in the United States, and, thereby, not eligible to be president. He continued questioning Obama's birthplace and other aspects of his life after the election.

Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, while not being nearly as definitive as Conway, made a similar assertion blaming the Clinton campaign.

“By the preponderance of evidence before us, Hillary Clinton, or her campaign, were definitely involved in this issue,” Priebus said, also on “Face the Nation.” “So we can’t keep saying it’s not true. That’s ridiculous.”

Priebus, who said he was never himself a birther, said he thought Trump was mostly just curious when he spoke up in 2011 and afterward. “I don’t think Donald Trump was thinking about 2016 in 2011. It was an issue that he was interested in,” he said.

During his own presidential campaign, Trump has suggested that Clinton’s campaign was the root of the birther theory. But that argument flies in the face of multiple reports and interviews showing that Trump himself fueled the controversy that Obama himself moved to put to rest in 2011 by publicly releasing his long-form birth certificate. (Obama had released his short-form birth certificate years earlier.) There’s also no indication Clinton or her campaign ever supported the idea that Obama was born outside the United States.

As POLITICO noted on Friday, birtherism seems to have started with Andy Martin, an Illinois political candidate who tried to frame Obama as a secret Muslim in 2004.

The Trump campaign has been eager to put to rest any discussion of Trump’s push to investigate Obama's heritage. In the same interview, Conway did not respond to questions on when Trump decided that Obama is an American citizen or what moved him away from any doubts about his birthplace. Conway said that “while the Clinton folks were pushing this theory, he was a successful businessman. He was building things.”

In a separate interview on ABC’s “This Week,” Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Trump’s running mate, said: “I think Donald Trump put an end to this issue.” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie made a similar point on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

David Cohen contributed to this article.