Here’s the headline at Mother Jones: “Birther John Philip Sousa IV Wants a Tea Party Darling to Run for President.” Mr. Sousa is, it seems, a disciple of Donald Trump, saying in an interview with Tim Murphy,
I mean, can you unequivocally say that Obama was born in the United States? I can’t. … I don’t trust [the documentation]. I don’t distrust it. I don’t know.
The Obama Conspiracy Theories Glossary defines “birther” as “someone who believes Barack Obama is not eligible to be President of the United States by reason of the facts of his birth.” Sousa doesn’t make himself a birther by that definition, but the way such statements are usually understood, his meaning is probably closer to “I don’t think Obama’s eligible to be President, but I’m not willing to commit myself on the record (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, say no more).”
So I am not going to criticize Andy Kroll’s characterization of Sousa as a birther, any more than I would criticize someone who called Donald Trump a birther.
Well, you’re judged by the company you keep.
If Sousa is gonna cast his lot with birthers, he’s gonna be judged as one.
One wonders how much Mr. Sousa agonizes over distrusting/not distrusting the at best spotty documentation of the previous 42 Presidents.
Agreed. He’s been “flirty” with them for quite some time now.
Sousa is a birther just as the people demanding investigation of whether the U.S. government perpetrated the 9/11 attacks are 9/11 inside-jobbers, and people doing historical research on the open question of whether the holocaust really happened are holocaust deniers.
You could use “birther-curious.”