Apr 13, 2011

Cantor blasts Trump on Obama birth certificate

02:08 PM
By J. Scott Applewhite, AP

Donald Trump can forget about getting a vote for president from a top House Republican leader.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., dismissed the real estate developer/reality TV star's nascent candidacy today -- in part because Trump keeps pushing the issue of President Obama's birth certificate.

"I don't think he is really serious when we ... see a campaign launched on the birther issue," Cantor said today on CNN's American Morning program.

Obama was born in Hawaii, despite repeated attempts by so-called "birthers" in the blogosphere who believe otherwise. Trump told our USA TODAY colleague Jackie Kucinich that he is "amazed Obama has gotten such a free pass on this issue" and has his own investigators digging into this.

Cantor said that there are some "very weighty issues" to tackle and attributes Trump's rise in a recent CNN poll to it being "very early" in the election cycle.

What "the American people are going to look for in a candidate for president in 2012 is I think someone who can be honest with the American people and face facts as far as the debt problem is concerned and lay out there what we're trying to do as Republicans in Congress and say ... we've got to prescribe a solution to fix the problems we're facing."

http://content.usatoday.com/communities ... al-race-/1