Here’s the transcript of President Barack Obama’s remarks shortly after the White House released his official long-form birth certificate.
The White House
Office of the Press Secretary
April 27, 2011
Remarks by the President
James S. Brady Press Briefing Room
9:48 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Hello, everybody. Now, let me just comment, first of all, on the fact that I can’t get the networks to break in on all kinds of other discussions — (laughter.) I was just back there listening to Chuck — he was saying, it’s amazing that he’s not going to be talking about national security. I would not have the networks breaking in if I was talking about that, Chuck, and you know it.
Q Wrong channel. (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: As many of you have been briefed, we provided additional information today about the site of my birth. Now, this issue has been going on for two, two and a half years now. I think it started during the campaign. And I have to say that over the last two and a half years I have watched with bemusement, I’ve been puzzled at the degree to which this thing just kept on going. We’ve had every official in Hawaii, Democrat and Republican, every news outlet that has investigated this, confirm that, yes, in fact, I was born in Hawaii, August 4, 1961, in Kapiolani Hospital.
We’ve posted the certification that is given by the state of Hawaii on the Internet for everybody to see. People have provided affidavits that they, in fact, have seen this birth certificate. And yet this thing just keeps on going.
Now, normally I would not comment on something like this, because obviously there’s a lot of stuff swirling in the press on at any given day and I’ve got other things to do. But two weeks ago, when the Republican House had put forward a budget that will have huge consequences potentially to the country, and when I gave a speech about my budget and how I felt that we needed to invest in education and infrastructure and making sure that we had a strong safety net for our seniors even as we were closing the deficit, during that entire week the dominant news story wasn’t about these huge, monumental choices that we’re going to have to make as a nation. It was about my birth certificate. And that was true on most of the news outlets that were represented here.
And so I just want to make a larger point here. We’ve got some enormous challenges out there. There are a lot of folks out there who are still looking for work. Everybody is still suffering under high gas prices. We’re going to have to make a series of very difficult decisions about how we invest in our future but also get a hold of our deficit and our debt — how do we do that in a balanced way.
And this is going to generate huge and serious debates, important debates. And there are going to be some fierce disagreements — and that’s good. That’s how democracy is supposed to work. And I am confident that the American people and America’s political leaders can come together in a bipartisan way and solve these problems. We always have.
But we’re not going to be able to do it if we are distracted. We’re not going to be able to do it if we spend time vilifying each other. We’re not going to be able to do it if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts. We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers.
We live in a serious time right now and we have the potential to deal with the issues that we confront in a way that will make our kids and our grandkids and our great grandkids proud. And I have every confidence that America in the 21st century is going to be able to come out on top just like we always have. But we’re going to have to get serious to do it.
I know that there’s going to be a segment of people for which, no matter what we put out, this issue will not be put to rest. But I’m speaking to the vast majority of the American people, as well as to the press. We do not have time for this kind of silliness. We’ve got better stuff to do. I’ve got better stuff to do. We’ve got big problems to solve. And I’m confident we can solve them, but we’re going to have to focus on them — not on this.
Thanks very much, everybody.
END 9:54 A.M. EDT
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17 Responses
Any one else who needed to produce their birth certificate could do so in just a few days or so.
It took two and a half YEARS to (work out the details in order to) produce this document.
I for one don’t believe it’s legit.
Were these remarks said ONLY to the assembled press corps or were they to the general American public? If to all of US, then why can’t he say “Hello my fellow Americans?” Or ” Good morning my fellow Americans.” And “Thanks very much America.” What’s with this “everybody” stuff? V’hamaivin yovin.
I could have gone to the dept of records in NYC near the Brooklyn Bridge and gotten mine in 3 minutes (excluding waiting time!), so what took this guy so long to come up with his?
Seriously? AinOhd and shuali – Torah scholars are supposed to be intelligent, analytical, and rational. Your comments are totally the opposite of that. Barack Obama was born in the United States and he is not a secret Muslim terrorist. You don’t have to agree with Obama’s policies, and you don’t have to like him but this birth certificate issue is just nonsense being used by Trump to get himself some publicity to inflate his massive ego.
This was a more informal press conference. “My Fellow Americans” is appropriate for more serious addresses from the Oval Office.
It doesn’t take 2.5 years to get a birth certificate on the black market either.
I still like how John Kerry produced his Vietnam-era documents that were typed up with Microsoft Word (as opposed to a document that would have been written on a typewriter).
Gittel: we are in total agreement. Our main concern, as citizens (i.e. voters), should be policy oriented . . . and his policies are a bit anti-American; anti-economy, anti-business, anti-industry. Bottom line, it is hard for him to speak as an American as it was hard for him to wear the flag on his lapel. Formal or informal, he does not come across as a patriot. Muslim or not. American born or not. Socialist or not. He is not for US (of A).
Gittel…
SERIOUSLY…
–“Barack Obama was born in the United States” – Why? Because a piece of paper it took TWO AND A HALF YEARS to produce – says so???
–“he is not a secret Muslim terrorist” – Nobody here said he is. Making silly statements to try to strengthen your ideas is just that – silly.
–“this birth certificate issue is just nonsense being used by Trump to get himself some publicity to inflate his massive ego” – sorry Gittel, but the birth certificate issue WAS an issue long before Trump said anything about possibly running for office.
Tell me Gittel… If YOU needed to produce YOUR birth certificate, how long would it take? A few days? Possibly a week?
Why would it take the PRESIDENT of the United States TWO and a HALF YEARS???
Think about it!
AinOhdMilvado,
I frankly have no idea what it would take to get a “long form birth certificate” like this one. My state of birth, Pennsylvania, does not issue them. The “short form” which is computer generated and contains less information than does President Obama’s “short form”. And the web site for the Pennsylvania Department of Records says,
“IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING RIGHT-TO-KNOW LAW: Birth certificates maintained by the Division of Vital Records are not public certificates and, therefore, cannot be released under the provisions of Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know-Law.”
http://hawaii.gov/health/vital-records/vital-records/vital_records.html
No caveats that it takes 2 and half years to process any requests.
Right after the “right to know” infor posted by the state of PA they tell you…..
Who May Request a Birth Certificate?
Only certain people can request a birth certificate. You must be:
Person named on the birth certificate, who is 18 years of age or older (if under 18, immediate family member must apply)
Legal representative
Husband / wife
Parent / step-parent*
Brother / sister / half-brother / half-sister
Son / daughter / stepson* / stepdaughter*
Grandparent / great grandparent (specify maternal or paternal)
Grandchild / great grandchild
Power of Attorney
Did not the president meet the guidelines for the first qualification?
Personally, I could care less if he was born in hawaii, nevada or venezuela. I didnt vote for him because of his platform, and I wont vote for him when he runs again for the same reason.
Until now he didn’t think any reasonable person would have any reason to doubt the fairly obvious facts, and he still doesn’t (“We’ve had every official in Hawaii, Democrat and Republican, every news outlet that has investigated this, confirm that, yes, in fact, I was born in Hawaii, August 4, 1961, in Kapiolani Hospital. We’ve posted the certification that is given by the state of Hawaii on the Internet for everybody to see. People have provided affidavits that they, in fact, have seen this birth certificate.”), but now he sees that sideshow carnival barkers (at least he stopped short of calling them clowns) are distracting the country from far more serious matters. I’d like to see Trump say under a lie detector that he really had serious doubts about Obama’s birthplace and wasn’t just using the whole issue as a publicity stunt. A few years ago he was saying that Obama was a great hero, but he’s done so many flipflops about so many things that it’s hard to take him seriously about anything.
My prediction is that this will be a rerun of the ’10 Connecticut senate race, where a sleazy wealthy Republican candidate put up so much personal money that the candidates who had something serious to offer the country backed out, realizing that they were unlikely to raise enough money to fight her and had better things to do with their time and political capital. Here too Trump’s willingness to put up billions of his own money will probably scare away a number of less committed candidates, lake Haley Barbour.
Hashem runs the world, including the US elections.
If the birth certificate is legitimate, what does the whole protracted affair say about Obama’s political judgement?
And if Obama has common sense, then how much credence can you attribute to the validity of this certificate?
US Politics, especially recent Presidential elections, has resembled a 3 ring circus, the more clowns and side show freaks, the merrier.
So now this President is blaming the past two and a half years of distractions while America collapsed on his birth certificate? So why didn’t he show it then? Something wrong with this guy.
@mark levin:
It would take you only a few minutes in NYC to get a copy of what is now being the “short form.”
He met the legal criteria years ago. The demand for the “long form” is a ridiculous side-show. He is a natural born citizen of the US.
I went to exchange my out-of-state driver license for a nys one a few weeks ago and I had to show my birth certificate as “proof of date of birth.” I also could have shown a passport, but you need your birth certifiate to get a passport too. So if Obama hasn’t had his birth certificate, what did he show to get his license? Wouldn’t this be on record somewhere if he had to use foreign ID or something to get a license? What about citizenship? If he wasn’t born here, wouldn’t someone have had to fill something out to apply for citizenship? I’m having a hard time understanding why this question still exists– not because it’s a stupid/irrelevant question, but because I’m baffled that it’s not obvious whether or not someone was born a citizen and therefore naturalized or not. How are there no other records other than a birth certificate that can answer this questions? Can someone explain this to me?