The Birther Myth Stuck Around For Years. The Election Fraud Myth Might Too.

[Luke]

Hope springs eternal for birthers. Debunking election fraud is an area to consider focusing on.

The Birther Myth Stuck Around For Years. The Election Fraud Myth Might Too.
By Kaleigh Rogers NOV. 23, 2020, AT 10:10 AM

A significant number of Americans currently believe the 2020 election was stolen, even though it wasn’t. A Reuters/Ipsos poll last week showed 52 percent of Republicans believe President Trump “rightfully won” the election. But the only “evidence” of election fraud has been widely debunked. An optimist might think the public will gradually drop this election fraud myth as the Trump campaign’s lawsuits are thrown out, recounts and audits are conducted, and, eventually, Joe Biden is sworn in as president. But we’ve seen Trump try to falsely claim a president is illegitimate before, as he spent years claiming without evidence that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States, and thus ineligible to be president. If this recent saga is anything like the birtherism movement, it’s not going anywhere. “If you’re asking if this is going to go away, I would bet a lot of money that it won’t,” said Adam Berinsky, a political scientist at MIT who is working on a book about political conspiracy theories.

Birtherism first emerged in 2008 during Obama’s primary campaign through the now very quaint medium of chain emails. After securing the nomination, Obama’s campaign published a copy of his certification of live birth in Hawaii. Many assumed this would put an end to the myth that he wasn’t born in America. Trump was one of the main people who ensured it did not. In 2011, Trump began aggressively beating the birtherism drum, including via some comments he made at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February. Over the next five years, in media appearances, speeches and on Twitter, Trump repeatedly made false claims that Obama was not born in America. This continued even after Obama released his long-form birth certificate in April 2011, a piece of evidence Trump had demanded. It wasn’t until Trump’s own campaign for president in 2016 — when his birtherism was thought to be among the reasons he wasn’t polling well among Black Americans — that Trump admitted the obvious truth: Obama was born in the United States. But that admission was brief (the statement lasted less than a minute) and included Trump blaming Hillary Clinton for originating the myth, which isn’t true.

When the birther myth first emerged, there wasn’t much in the way of public opinion polling about it. It wasn’t until Trump revived the conspiracy theory in 2011 that pollsters started to track how much of the public believed it. And over the years, even as more evidence emerged — such as the long-form birth certificate and contemporaneous newspaper announcements — proving Obama was born in the U.S., the belief has persisted. As recently as last year, a YouGov poll found that 34 percent of Americans think it’s “probably true” or “definitely true” that Obama was born in Kenya, as the birther myth often claimed. Among self-identified Republicans, that number was 56 percent. “There were these temporary dips in birther beliefs when major events happened and news coverage was reminding people of that evidence,” said Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College. “But birther misperceptions typically reverted back to their prior levels after that information shock had dissipated.”

Hard evidence of falsehood doesn’t sway birthers
Share of respondents who say they believe Obama was born in the United States, or believe he was not born in the United States, 2009-17

Many Americans were wrongly skeptical after Obama was sworn in
DATE POLLSTER BORN IN U.S. NOT BORN IN U.S.
8/17/09 PPP 62% 25%
9/21/09 PPP 59 23
4/12/10 CBS/NYT 58 20
4/25/10 ABC 77 20
6/3/10 CBS News 63 13
7/21/10 CNN/ORC 71 27
11/15/10 Knowledge Networks 55 15
3/13/11 CNN/ORC 72 25
4/5/11 Fox News 67 24
4/10/11 Pew 55 23
4/20/11 CBS/NYT 57 25
4/23/11 Gallup 57 24
4/26/11 YouGov 55 15

Releasing Obama’s long-form birth certificate in April 2011 didn’t have a lasting effect
DATE POLLSTER BORN IN U.S. NOT BORN IN U.S.
5/1/11 CNN/ORC 80% 17%
5/1/11 The Washington Post 86 10
5/3/11 YouGov 67 13
5/8/11 Gallup 65 13
1/31/12 YouGov 59 17
7/2/12 YouGov 55 20
9/11/12 AP/GfK 49 39
9/17/12 YouGov 59 21
9/8/15 CNN/ORC 75 13
1/17/16 Morning Consult 48 34
5/9/16 PPP 57 30

Neither did Trump admitting Obama was born in the U.S. in September 2016
DATE POLLSTER BORN IN U.S. NOT BORN IN U.S.
9/19/16 YouGov 61% 22%
9/24/16 Selzer 75 11
3/5/17 Morning Consult 57 26
Numbers do not add up to 100 percent because respondents could indicate they were undecided on the matter.

In April 2011, for example, a YouGov poll found that 55 percent of Americans believed Obama was born in the U.S. That was before Obama released his birth certificate. After he released it, the same pollster found that number had climbed to 67 percent. But a year and a half later, the number had dipped again, down to 59 percent. “If you look at the percentage of people who reject the rumor, it doesn’t really move at all. All of the movement is in and out of this ‘not sure’ category,” said Berinsky.

There are a number of reasons why the birther myth remains so tenacious even in the face of hard evidence, according to Tali Sharot, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London who studies how emotions influence people’s beliefs. Sharot said myths are shored up by how much a person is motivated to believe them, and how well that belief sits with their current worldview. “Most beliefs we have are in fact true. We believe the sun rises in the morning. We believe that winter is cold and that if we walk forward we move forward,” Sharot said. “If I come and tell you the sun won’t rise in the morning, you don’t believe me and you would be right. It doesn’t make sense to change your belief every time there’s a piece of evidence that counters it. How can you operate in a world where your beliefs are changing every second?”

With birtherism, many Americans didn’t want Obama to be president, so the belief that he was ineligible was a convenient narrative and they were motivated to accept it. It was also bolstered by racism against the first Black president. But Sharot said the election fraud myth is likely going to be even more persistent because it’s more personal, and based on many pieces of disinformation that are harder to discredit. There’s no single document — à la the long-form birth certificate — that can definitively say the election was free and fair.

Trump supporters are highly motivated to believe there was election fraud, because they want their candidate to have won. Add in that Trump and the GOP establishment continue to spread their fraudulent narrative, and it’s understandable that so many Americans think something is wrong. But even as more information is revealed and it becomes apparent that no widespread election fraud has occurred, it’s likely those beliefs will linger for years to come. “I think the current situation is going to be much, much worse than birtherism in terms of people believing it, and believing it for the long run,” Sharot said.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/th ... might-too/

[raison de arizona]

No chance this is going away, zero. Trump will continue repeating it every chance he gets, and his followers will eat it up.

[DrConspiracy]

The Stolen Election Hoax will of course stick around much longer because it already has a larger base and it is being fueled by better connected people. No member of Congress was openly a birther.

FWIW, the Union of Concerned Scientists has a new (Summer 2022) article on combating disinformation. It has some techniques and principles in line with prior research papers.

https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/fi ... _final.pdf

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Thanks for the report link, Dr. C.

[raison de arizona]

Thanks for the report link, Dr. C.

[Foggy]

I think the birther myth became irrelevant, after Obama left office. And here's a key difference - Trump didn't make belief in birtherism a pre-requisite for supporting him in 2016. He welcomed the birther supporters, but it wasn't a necessary thing for participation in his campaign.

Whereas, you can't really be a Trumper any more if you don't claim the 2020 election was stolen.

It's an outright lie. It was the subject of more than five dozen lawsuits, none of which produced any evidence. It's widely known as a fabrication, and a majority of the electorate clearly understands that he tried to organize a coup to overthrow our democracy and seize the White House illegally, after losing the election by more than 7 million votes.

But if you don't claim the election was stolen ... if you don't insist to this very day that not only did he do nothing wrong, he is the legitimate president of the United States of America ... then you aren't fully on board, and you're not really a member of Team Trump.

So, umm ... yeah. Stolen election will be around long after birtherism is long forgotten.

[bill_g]

Have we ever seen tfg's birth certificate?

[Suranis]

Have we ever seen tfg's birth certificate?

Ironically, yes. Here is a story from prehistiry

He sneeringly published his one day on Newsmax to show how easy it is. Then We pointed out it wasnt an offiial birth certificate - it was a hospital generated BC that was given out to parents to commemorate a birth, but was not an official BC, useless for getting a passport etc.

So a day or so later he published another one on Newsmax. Yes this was an official BC - but it was a short form BC, the same thing he had been raging about with Obama's BC - not the official birth records he insisted were so easy to get. Needless to say, people were laughing their heads off at him at this point.

So later he published an inverse photocopy of his official Birth records and Newsmax deleted all mention of the previous ones. He probably bribed someone to get to it.

After that he stopped saying it was so easy to get your original BC after that, just yapping about how Obama's was not a real BC, and trusting the fawning Press, that they would not keep bringing up the fact that HE couldn't easily get to them himself, and of course never mentioning that Noo Yawk is a totally different jurisdiction than Hawai'i.

[bill_g]

Thanks.

[Suranis]

Heres the first doc Trump release. As you can see the headline is "Exclusive to Newsmax: Trump's Hospital Birth Docs" but the link references a "birth certificate" showing that they edited the article after publishing it, and the original article was about a "birth certificate."

https://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/don ... id/390930/

A later Newsmax article reflects Trump screaming as people had been laughing their heads off at him at this point. "Angry Trump Fires Back: Here’s My Official Birth Certificate — Where’s Yours?" This was after the "short form" mess, of course.

https://www.newsmax.com/Headline/Donald ... id/391036/

And even then people cheekily said it was a "certificate of Birth" not a "Birth certificate." Like most birthers, he had been saying it had to be marked as a "birth certificate" to actually be an official BC, and "Certificates of Birth" don't count.

"Donald Trump Releases His Birth Certificate, Or Certificate Of Birth, Or Something To Newsmax"

https://www.mediaite.com/online/donald- ... o-newsmax/

Another source about it, talking about the fact that he released his hospital souvenier rather than his actual BC

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-t ... f_n_842141

[bob]

There still are a few people who believe, any day now!, that Obama will be prosecuted, and his official actions will somehow be undone.

So, yeah, I fully expect in 2026 there will be some wanting to decertify the 2020 election.

The question are: how many, and how prominent?

[Suranis]

I imagine when the Republicans eventually move to sideline TFG, a lot of people will suddenly forget all about 2020 being illegitimate.

[Ben-Prime]

Have we ever seen tfg's birth certificate?

I mean, aren't there still questions about him being an orangutan or something?

[pipistrelle]

There still are a few people who believe, any day now!, that Obama will be prosecuted, and his official actions will somehow be undone.

So, yeah, I fully expect in 2026 there will be some wanting to decertify the 2020 election.

The question are: how many, and how prominent?

How many felons?

[Gene Kooper]

I mean, aren't there still questions about him being an orangutan or something?

Back in 2014 David Letterman exposed the social truth about the Mango Mussolini.

[Suranis]

Have we ever seen tfg's birth certificate?

I mean, aren't there still questions about him being an orangutan or something?

He refused Bill Maher's invitation to prove one of his parents was not an Ourangutan, despite Maher offering 5 million Dollars. Probably the only time I Liked Bill Maher. It was in response to Donald offering 5 million to Obama to show his Birth cert.

[Maybenaut]

From what I recall, Trump offered to donate $5M to the charity of Obama’s choice if Obama would release his college transcripts and passport records. Then Maher offered to Trump that he would donate $5M to the charity of Trump’s choice if Trump could prove that he wasn’t the result of his mother having sex with an orangutan. As Suranis said, Trump tried to prove it by sending Maher his short form but Maher never paid and Trump filed suit. Trump withdrew the lawsuit a few months later.

[Suranis]

Stephen Colbert, in his Right wing Persona, offered Trump 1 Million to a charity of his choice if he would let Colbert dip his balls into Trumps Mouth. But the dipping would have to "be to both my and my balls satisfaction."

https://www.gawker.com/5954819/icymi-st ... your-mouth

But over at the Colbert Report, Stephen offers to save Trump's "game-changing" announcement by counter-offering with a bargain that would be both a huge surprise and a major game-changer if accepted.

For a donation of $1 million to the charity of Trump's choice, the blackmailing billionaire must submit his mouth to a dipping from Colbert's balls.

"Nothing would make me happier than to write this check," said Colbert. "And nothing would make America happier than have something going into your mouth than coming out of it."

[Foggy]

... and while Trump only offered $5 million (and is famous for never paying his debts), the birthers later inflated that to claim that Trump was totally willing and able to pay FIFTY MILLION DOLLARS to a CHARITY of Obama's choice, and if he really cared about anybody but himself, and if he had nothing to hide, why the heck wouldn't he want his favorite charity to get $50 million?

So that was proof that Obama DID have something to hide, and made Trump a huge birther hero, which he still is to this very day.