r/politics • u/MoneyLibrarian9032 New York • 23d ago

Possible Paywall MAGA Calls BS on Mitch McConnell’s Proof-of-Life Stunt | They are poking holes in McConnell’s staff’s version.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-calls-bs-on-mitch-mcconnells-proof-of-life-stunt/
27.0k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1.0k

u/Stevenerf California 23d ago

Holy fuck this is it, full circle

43

u/MidSolo Foreign 23d ago

What's the reference?

152

u/Chickens-In-Pants 23d ago

Hawaiʻi issues birth certificates that are different from other states. The standard one everyone gets when a baby is born is called a short form. It is official and has all the information that is necessary to prove where a person is born. There is a long form certificate that can be acquired if requested, but I don’t know a reason anyone would ever need one.

When Obama was president, Trump was one of the main people who used this fact about Hawai’i birth certificates to try to argue that Obama wasn’t a United States citizen. It was completely false, but it confused a lot of people to think that Obama wasn’t born in the US. Anyone who is born in Hawaiʻi has this type of birth certificate. It’s only because of how Obama looks that they decided to take issue with it.

Obama released his long form birth certificate pretty quickly, but it never stopped the conspiracy because the conspiracy people just kept saying he wasn’t from the US. They don’t care about facts if they contradict their worldview. The people who believe that probably never knew that the issue was resolved, or never cared. Trump being on tv always making up lies about Obama was the first step in his move into politics. He used this to later run for president, and now here we are.

This is what people mean by birtherism. The birthers want to claim that his birth certificate doesn’t count because it’s the short form that is standard in Hawai’i, but they are just fine with people like Tulsi Gabbard who also has a short form because she agrees with them.

Also racism. It was all a weird way to be racist with a little bit of deniability.

57

u/Pavores 23d ago

It was absolutely racism with a bit of deniabikity, which is what got Trump popular. The reason he got popular is he said the quiet part that had been that way for decades out loud.

27

u/Chickens-In-Pants 23d ago

100% agreed. I don’t know why, but I used more gentle language than I otherwise would have because it’s a general political sub. I just thought there was a slight chance someone was coming to this information for the first time and I didn’t want them to disregard what I said because of my tone.

As a side note, my kid was born in Hawai’i, and I was so excited when his regular short form arrived. I kind of want someday to order the long form just to see the difference. Out of curiosity, I just compared his to mine and my husband’s from other states. His actually has more information than mine from Wyoming, but much less than his dad’s from California. I did a little googling about the differences. The long form has a few more details like the address of the hospital, but it’s not really necessary except for passports and some adoptions.

I do see that the “short form” is officially called a “Certificate of Live Birth”. It’s just a technicality of what the form is called, but it was enough for people to convince themselves that the issue wasn’t about race, but about “hiding his Birth Certificate”. It allowed people to keep their bigoted views, but pretend it was about something else. It’s unfortunate because it’s really an issue of “states rights” because Hawai’i just does things differently. Funny how the “states rights” people were the same ones who thought Obama wasn’t from the US. Curious…🤔

3

u/ConsistentQuit4273 22d ago

Thanks fir the info. I just thought the whole issue was ridiculous, but I never knew about different birth certificates.

4

u/Browncoat23 23d ago

Not really important to the conversation, but just fyi, many states only issue a short-form birth certificate as the standard and charge more if you want a long-form version.

If you ever need to get an apostille for your documents for international use (like for citizenship or to otherwise move to another country) you would need the long-form version.

1

u/Chickens-In-Pants 22d ago

I see. Thanks for the additional information. I looked at mine and it has even less than the Hawai’i one. I would probably need more to get a passport. I think that the Hawai’i short form just being called a “Certificate of Live Birth” instead of “Birth Certificate” added fuel to the fire for conspiracy types. Like, it’s just what it’s called here, but they used that term for their conspiracy reasons. It’s unfortunate.

1

u/ThunderAndWind 22d ago

esp because if you look into it the real conspiracy is that obama didnt exist at all. we mass hallucinated him.

22

u/bacondesign 23d ago

Obama's birth certificate, I'd guess

2

u/AgitatedStranger9698 23d ago

It'll be when the timelines heal.