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Donald Trump says he doesn’t want to discuss this any more, but it’s time to start reminding the voting public how this raging bigot made his bones with the right wing — by pandering to the racist Birther movement.

There was a time when the US media were telling us the Birthers were no longer an issue in the right wing base, but I never bought it. I was looking at comment sections on right wing websites and seeing hundreds — thousands — of comments from people who were absolutely sold on the Birther delusion. And obviously Donald Trump was seeing the same thing, because he worked ceaselessly to exploit these deranged, degraded people, and he built a base of conspiracy-minded followers that have now elevated him to the Republican nomination for president of the United States.

Here’s Trump on the Bill O’Reilly show in March 2011, spewing the kind of Birther insanity that built his right wing support. To his credit, Bill O’Reilly tried to push back, but not even he could stand against this tide of bad craziness. And it’s poetic justice in a way, because Fox News and O’Reilly himself are largely responsible for creating the audience of right wing robots who were ready and willing to follow Donald Trump into his cesspool of conspiracy theories and racism.

(Note: this video was posted by a right wing Birther account, so after viewing it, you may want to visit your YouTube history and delete it, so YouTube doesn’t start filling up your suggested videos with similar insanity.)