Obama Mocks Birthers at Fundraiser

Politico reports:

President Obama made clear Wednesday night that his release of his birth certificate was intended not just to answer conspiracy theorists but also to embarrass Republicans, and to contrast his presidential stature with a party whose most visible face is a that of celebrity developer Donald Trump.

“My name is Barack Obama. “I was born in Hawaii, the 50th State of the U.S.A.” he began at his final stop Wednesday evening, drawing roars of approval from a crowd of some 1,300 donors at The Town Hall in New York. “Nobody checked my ID at the door.”

Obama flew from Chicago, where he taped the Oprah Winfrey show, to three fundraisers Tuesday: an exclusive dinner at the Manhattan apartment of former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, a gathering of some 350 supporters at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, and the last and largest event at The Town Hall where, outside in Times Square, a comedy club busker announced to passers-by that “you don’t need a birth certificate to get a comedy ticket.”

The president began each of his speeches with pointed references to the “sideshow” he’d chided the press for covering Wednesday morning, but in each of his speeches pivoted quickly to weighty matters of the presidency, and his own record. Reviving the broad national themes of his 2008 campaign, he argued that America has to balance its free market individualism with the understanding that “we are a family.”

“My biggest adversaries aren’t my political opponents,” he said, reviving a central 2008 theme. “My biggest adversary is the cynicism that can be so corrosive if people stop believing in this idea of America.”