Perry says he’s unsure of validity of Obama’s birth certificate

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WASHINGTON — Resuscitating an issue that flared
earlier this year, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said in a new interview that he
isn’t sure that President Barack Obama’s birth certificate is real.

The GOP presidential candidate was asked by Parade magazine whether he believed that Obama was born in the United States.

“I have no reason to think otherwise,” he said.

Pressed
for a “definitive” answer, Perry continued: “Well, I don’t have a
definitive answer, because he’s never seen my birth certificate.”

“But you’ve seen his,” the interviewer replied.

“I don’t know. Have I?” Perry said.

Obama
released a certificate of live birth during his 2008 campaign, showing
that he was born in Hawaii. But that failed to stem accusations from
opponents who insisted that the document was not real, and that Obama
had been born in Africa, like his father.

After
businessman Donald Trump flirted with a presidential bid while
questioning Obama’s birthplace, the White House released the long-form
version of his Hawaii birth certificate. Government officials, both
Democratic and Republican, have attested to his birth in the state, as
have newspaper announcements placed in Hawaiian newspapers in the days
after his birth.

But some in the “birther”
movement, including Trump, still aren’t convinced. Perry said the two
discussed the issue and that Trump told him he doesn’t trust Obama’s
documents.

“I don’t know,” Perry said when asked
if he believed the birth certificate was real. “I had dinner with Donald
Trump the other night. … He doesn’t think it’s real. … I don’t have any
idea. It doesn’t matter. (Obama is) the President of the United States.
He’s elected. It’s a distractive issue.”

In the
interview, Perry also took aim at Al Gore, whose presidential campaign
the Texan aided in 1988, when he was still a Democrat. Asked whether he
had seen the film “An Inconvenient Truth,” or Gore’s book on global
warming, on which the film was based, Perry replied: “No, I generally
don’t watch or read a lot of fiction.”

He added that he did not blame global warming for the spate of fires that have erupted in Texas this year.

“I truly believe the science is not settled on the issue of man-made global warming,” he said.

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