Michael Grunwald is a senior staff writer for Politico Magazine.

MIAMI—Many of Donald Trump’s supporters at his raucous rally here Friday night still believe President Obama was born in Kenya. “I know it in my heart,” said Pedro Almeyda, an elevator engineer. Others still aren’t sure. “He doesn’t show love for this country, but who knows?” asked Carmen Suarez, a retired nurse. And still others always knew Obama is a native-born American. “I never took that stuff seriously,” said James Fry, the owner of a real estate firm.

But this much was clear: Trump’s sudden abandonment of his five-year birther crusade on Friday does not seem to have changed how his supporters view either him or Obama. In interviews at the rally, the birthers and non-birthers all seemed to think that Trump has privately agreed with them all along, and all praised his flip-flop as a shrewd political stratagem to change an inconvenient subject. Most of them also trashed Obama as an unpatriotic disaster, whether or not they thought he was really born here.


“I never believed Obama was a real American, but really, I could give a crap,” said Jim Neubauer, a self-employed inventor who came to the rally with his grandson. “He’s been terrible, Trump will be great, and Democrats are just using this to try to call him racist. Let’s talk about stuff that matters.”

The willingness of Trump's supporters to forgive his inconsistencies over time—his former donations to Democrats and the Clinton Foundation, his onetime support for abortion rights, his zig-zags on his tax plans, his foreign policies, and even his immigration ideas - has always been one of his political strengths. Clinton has not run ads or focused her speeches on his flip-flops, in part because she fears voters will assume he really believes the position they agree with.

Trump did not mention the birther controversy at all in Miami, but he did complain about the racism allegations that have swirled around his campaign—not only over his efforts to delegitimize the first black president, but his attacks on a judge’s Mexican heritage, his initial refusal to disavow the white supremacist David Duke, and much more. He said Hillary Clinton’s campaign “relies on the tired tactic of smearing opponents who question her policies as racist,” calling it “the oldest play in the Democratic playbook.” He then departed from his prepared text to elaborate.

“They talk all about racism, racism, racism. It’s the only word they know,” Trump said. “Whenever they’re in trouble, they use it, and they’re in big trouble.”

In Miami, Trump’s supporters repeatedly accused Democrats of ginning up the controversy to score political points, while attributing Trump’s admission of Obama’s American roots to the demands of politics as well. Birthers like Fermin Vazquez, a disabled veteran from nearby Coral Gables, suggested that Trump is now fibbing to tamp down the media frenzy, even though he secretly believes Obama is a foreigner. “He knows the truth, but he’s got to follow the rules to get elected,” Vazquez said.

Marlon Montero, a student and Trump volunteer, never believed the birther falsehoods, and he’s convinced Trump never believed them either. He suggested the innuendo that worked in the Republican primary was no longer working, so Trump is wisely dropping it. “When you’re running for president, you need media attention, and Mr. Trump got it when he needed it,” Montero said. “He knows what he’s doing.”

Most Republicans in Miami-Dade County are Cuban-American, so the crowd on Friday was far more Hispanic than a typical Trump crowd. But the admiration for Trump’s patriotism and the suspicion of Obama’s motives seemed pretty typical. Both birthers (who were often well-versed in Internet conspiracy theories about Obama’s Kenyan half-brother) and non-birthers (who tended to grin and roll their eyes about those theories) agreed that Democrats nervous about Clinton’s recent poll numbers concocted the latest media storm over the president’s roots. And neither group seemed to be persuaded or bothered by Trump’s eleventh-hour conversion.

Almeyda, the elevator engineer, said he’s loved America ever since the day he arrived from Cuba 17 years ago, and he’s never sensed that kind of love from Obama. He sees Trump as a true patriot with the guts to tell the truth about the president—except for Friday's concession to political reality.

“Obama’s a communist. His mother and father were communists. For sure he was born in Kenya,” Almeyda said. “I guess Trump had to say he wasn’t, for politics. But remember, it was Trump who asked for Obama’s birth certificate. He knows.”

Millie Cagol, a housewife in Coral Gables, said Trump is a provocateur, not a racist, describing the initial birth certificate demand as a combination of savvy politics and due diligence. Now that the political winds have shifted, and the due diligence is long done, Cagol figures Trump is free to tell the truth. “He just did it to get attention and stir people up. And I think he likes to see things on paper,” Cagol said. “Anyway, he’s moving on.”

In fact, Trump continued to question Obama’s citizenship long after the president produced his birth certificate, something no previous president was ever asked to do. Before Trump began pursuing the White House, birtherism was seen as a bizarre fringe theory, one reason he was seen as such a longshot.

But for many Republicans, the birther speculation has felt like a satisfying explanation of a president with an African name and an exotic background who always felt alien to their experience as well as hostile to their ideology. Lazaro Lazano, an anti-Castro activist, thinks Obama is pro-Castro, pro-terrorist, and anti-American, and always assumed he was born abroad. He still thinks that, but now that Trump has backed off, Lazano said he must admit that it’s not something he can know for certain.

“I wasn’t there when he was born,” Lazano said. “But I’ll tell you this: I know for a fact that he’s a Muslim.”