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Call it Payback for That Birther Business, Mr. Trump

By Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on

If you're going to play the victim, make sure you're really victimized.

That's the lesson that I hope conservative CNN commentator and radio host Ben Ferguson learned after criticizing Rep. John Lewis for describing Donald Trump as an "illegitimate president."

Ferguson said it was "unprecedented" for the Georgia Democrat and civil rights icon to challenge Trump's legitimacy. "I can't imagine the fallout, the backfire that you would have if a Republican ever implied that about Barack Obama or Bill Clinton or JFK or anyone else for that matter," Ferguson said.

Ah, how soon we forget.

"Ben, Ben, Ben, that's exactly what many Republicans did," CNN host Poppy Harlow interrupted, "including the president-elect for years questioning the legitimacy of the first black president."

Indeed, who can forget how Trump began in 2011 to build what later became his political base by promoting the so-called "birther" conspiracy theories, which without evidence -- but with more than a whiff of racism -- challenged the validity of President Barack Obama's birth certificate and citizenship?

 

Why did Lewis not see Trump as a "legitimate president"?

"I think the Russians participated in helping this man get elected," Lewis told Chuck Todd on NBC's "Meet the Press." "And they helped destroy the candidacy of Hillary Clinton."

No wonder Trump was outraged by Lewis' challenge to his legitimacy. If anything really gets under President-elect Donald Trump's skin, it is a taste of his own medicine.

Now he knows how it feels to have his legitimacy questioned, despite his best efforts to tell us otherwise.

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(c) 2017 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

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