Boasting of compelling the White House to release Barack Obama's birth certificate, Donald Trump said he was "very proud" of raising the issue whether the president was actually born in America, reports The Hill.
"Well I'm the one that got him to put up his birth certificate," the Republican presidential nominee told NH1's Paul Steinhauser in an interview. "Hillary Clinton was unable to get there and I will tell you she tried. And you look at her campaign and everybody knows it happened," said Trump.
"I would say that pretty much everybody agrees with me, but she tried and she was unable to do it and I tried and I was able to do it, so I'm very proud of that."
After questioning Obama's birthplace constantly for five years, Trump's campaign manager Kellyanne Conway acknowledged earlier this month, the Republican presidential candidate "believes President Obama was born in the U.S."
Trump's campaign claimed that it was Clinton and her 2008 team that had been the original birthers. "This started with Hillary Clinton's campaign, number one," Conway told CBS News.
"Number two, it was Donald Trump who put the issue to rest when he got President Obama to release his birth certificate years later and number three, he said President Obama was born in this country period and let's move on to creating jobs, defeating radical Islam, rebuilding our inner cities."
Earlier this week, Michelle Obama slammed Trump for spearheading the "birther" theories during a rally in Philadelphia to promote Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. She said Trump's claims "cannot be blamed on others or swept under the rug by an insincere sentence uttered at a press conference."
Trump during Monday night's debate blamed Clinton's 2008 campaign manager for starting the "birther" conspiracy.