Two years ago, Hawaii health director Chiyome Fukino personally reviewed President Obama's birth certificate and pronounced it legitimate. Earlier today, in an exclusive telephone interview with NBC News, she felt compelled to respond to speak out on the continued lunacy coming from the birther movement--particularly from Donald Trump.
Fukino, sounding both exasperated and amused, spoke to a reporter in the aftermath of Donald Trump's statements on the NBC Today show last week questioning whether Obama has a legitimate birth certificate.
Trump, who says he is considering a run for president, repeated his claims on CNN's "State of the Union" Sunday, saying that "nobody has any information" about the president's birth and that "if he wasn't born in this country, he shouldn't be president of the United States."
No matter what state officials release on the issue, the "birthers" are going to question it, said Fukino. "They’re going to question the ink on which it was written or say it was fabricated," said Fukino. "The whole thing is silly."
Fukino, for those who don't recall, reviewed Obama's birth certificate twice. Besides her July 2009 review, she also reviewed it in October 2008 after then-governor Linda Lingle wanted to quell already-festering rumors about then-candidate Obama's birthplace. Both times, the documents were all in order.
Fukino also added one key point--her then-boss, Lingle, had no reason to lie about Obama's birthplace. After all, Lingle was backing McCain, the guy who would have the most to benefit if it turned out Obama really was hiding his birthplace.
Fukino also addressed Obama's now-famous Certificate of Live Birth. She says that anyone born in Hawaii gets a Certificate of Live Birth whenever they ask for a birth certificate.
The document was distributed to the Obama campaign in 2007 after Obama, at the request of a campaign official, personally signed a Hawaii birth certificate request form downloaded on the Internet, according to a former campaign official who asked for anonymity. (Obama was "testy" when asked to sign the form but did so anyway to put the issue to rest, the former campaign official said. The White House has dismissed all questions about the president's birth as "fictional nonsense.")
The certification that the campaign received back —which shows that Obama was born in Honolulu at 7:24 p.m. on Aug. 4, 1961 — was based on the content of the original document in state files, Fukino said.
"What he got, everybody got," said Fukino. "He put out exactly what everybody gets when they ask for a birth certificate."
And according to Joshua Wisch, a spokesman for the state attorney general's office, that's all the state is legally permitted to release. Hawaii law doesn't allow the release of an actual birth certificate to anyone--not even the person whose birth is recorded on the certificate. The only way Obama could review his birth record is if he personally went to the state health department--and even then, he couldn't legally get a photocopy. So much for "where's the birth certificate?"
Update: Since this made the rec list, I thought I'd share Candy Crowley's interview with Trump--the piece that had Fukino in a tizzy: