July 23, 2009: Radio Host Asserts Debunked Claim that ‘Obama’s Grandmother’ Witnessed His Birth in a Kenyan Hospital

Right-wing talk show host and convicted felon G. Gordon Liddy (see March 23, 1974) claims to have evidence that President Obama was born in Kenya and not in the US. MSNBC host Chris Matthews interviews Liddy about the claim, which rests on long-discredited statements purporting to be from Obama’s “grandmother” Sarah Obama. Liddy says that Sarah Obama, who is not Obama’s biological grandmother but the second wife of Obama’s grandfather and a woman the president calls “Granny Sarah,” filed “a deposition, which is a sworn statement, from the step-grandmother, who says, ‘I was present and saw him born in Mombasa, Kenya.’” The “deposition” claim comes from street preacher Ron McRae, who interviewed Sarah Obama in her Kenyan home via telephone. Through a translator, Vitalis Akech Ogombe, Sarah Obama apparently misspoke and told McRae that she saw Barack Obama born in Mombasa; when McRae pressed for details, Ogombe and other family members present quickly corrected Sarah Obama’s error and repeatedly affirmed Obama’s birth in Hawaii. McRae, however, continued to press for what he considered a blurted-out truth the family was trying to hide (see October 16, 2008 and After). Salon columnist Alex Koppelman writes: “No matter, though, because people who believe in a conspiracy theory simply hear what they want to hear. So some birther sites have posted transcripts and YouTube clips that end abruptly with the mistranslation and don’t include the corrections. McRae, for his part, included the full translation in his affidavit—he thinks it’s all just part of the conspiracy.” McRae then filed a deposition claiming that Ogombe and the other family members he interviewed “have obviously been versed to counter such facts with the common purported information from the American news media that Obama was born in Hawaii.” Though Matthews attempts to elicit this material during his interview with Liddy, the radio host will continue to promulgate the claim that “Obama’s grandmother” watched his birth in a Mombasa hospital. [Chicago Tribune, 12/3/2008; Salon, 7/23/2009] Obama’s presidential campaign released a verified copy of Obama’s birth certificate (see June 13, 2008), and a number of non-partisan organizations have subsequently verified its validity (see June 27, 2008 and August 21, 2008).