Just before the 2016 presidential election, those in the UK got to watch program called “The Trump Dossier” as part of a series called Conspiracy Theories on BBC 2. One of the main focuses of the program is Trump’s birtherism. They interviewed a number of birthers for the program, some of whom appear in it, notably Orly Taitz. Paul Irey also makes an appearance, calling Obama’s birth certificate “the greatest fraud in the history of the world.” Doug Vogt makes an appearance also. Former Trump advisor, Roger Stone, holds the narrative of Trumps involvement in all of the conspiracies together. Larry Klayman gets a shot on the Clinton/Jennifer Flowers story.
Ivan Zatkovich, one of the early expert researchers of Obama’s certificate, is interviewed and gives an opinion that Obama’s certificate is the scan of a real document with contrast enhancement and OCR. (He is right in that there is a form of character recognition done by JBIG2 compression, but it is not properly called OCR.)
The particular claims in the program about Obama’s birth certificate (stuff fully covered in The Debunker’s Guide to Obama Conspiracy Theories):
- The word “African” would not appear on a legitimate birth certificate from 1961 – Taitz
- Halos around the text on Obama’s long form PDF prove it’s a computer fake – Irey
- Loretta was bribed to authenticate Obama’s birth certificate and that she was murdered – Doug Vogt
The second area of the program deals with the conspiracy theory about the involvement of Ted Cruz’ father in the assassination of President Kennedy. This story seems to have come from early birther Wayne Madsen. It suggests that Trump used this conspiracy theory to gain the upper hand in his race against Cruz for the Republican nomination.
Trump turned from “Lyin’ Ted Cruz” to “Lyin’ Hillary Clinton.” The final segment deals with Trump’s claims about Hillary Clinton and the Vince Foster suicide. Trump alleged that Hillary Clinton threatened women into silence that Bill Clinton had affairs with.
The Clintons are more like a crime syndicate than they are a family
— Roger Stone
I was a consultant to the production.
Visit BBC documentary on Trump’s birtherism for updates to this article that originally appeared at Obama Conspiracy Theories.
