Trump campaign acknowledges Obama was born in US

US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's campaign has acknowledged that President Barack Obama was born in the US, media reported.

By broaching the topic three years later, Mr Trump had done a "great service" to the public and president, senior Trump advisor Jason Miller said in a statement.

The statement was followed by a media interview in which Trump had declined to say Obama was born in the US, and declined to answer the question.

Trump had been a leader of the "birther" movement that questioned Hawaii-born Obama's citizenship but his campaign has now accusing Democratic rival Hillary Clinton of introducing the "smear", a claim that Obama was actually born in Kenya and therefore ineligible to be President, during the 2008 Democratic nomination contest, BBC reported.

However there is no evidence that Clinton or her then campaign had anything to do with it.

Clinton tweeted that President Obama's successor "cannot and will not be the man who led the racist birther movement".

Trump became a vocal questioner of Obama's citizenship as when he was running for his second term.

In April 2011, Trump challenged Obama to show his birth certificate, gaining approval from Republicans including former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who had been the Republican vice presidential candidate in the 2008 race.

Few weeks later, Obama, at a White House correspondents dinner, released his actual birth certificate from his native Hawaii and mocked Trump.

--IANS

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