Democrat personality David Paterson, former governor of New York and now a talk-radio host on WOR in New York City, has suggested Barack Obama could be ineligible for the Oval Office and “got away” with it.
And Paterson compared Obama’s actions to those of Richard Nixon, which he likened to treason.
On his show yesterday, he was asserting, along with NBC Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd, that GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney should have distanced himself more from developer Donald Trump and his doubts about Obama’s eligibility.
“Even if he wasn’t born in the United States at this point,” Paterson said. “It’s kind of like he got away with it.”
He continued, “A lot of people get away with a lot of things.”
Paterson compared Obama’s actions to those of President Richard Nixon.
“We learned later that Nixon spied on Johnson’s Paris peace talks,” Paterson said. “That was actually an act of … uh … I mean it was against the interests of the U.S. government. You’ve got to say that before you would say it’s treason. But he got away with it. Decided it wasn’t a good thing to bring up at that particular time. Not only did he get away with it, he won the election.”
The interview has been posted online by WOR. Paterson’s comments come at about the 16:20 mark.
Before the comments, Paterson and Todd had agreed that Romney was doing his campaign no benefit by not distancing himself from Trump, who just this week blasted CNN for not reporting on the issue more accurately.
The billionaire businessman told lead political anchor Wolf Blitzer the network would improve its dismal viewer ratings if it would only report the issue of Obama’s eligibility to be president “accurately.”
“Obama does not like the issue of where he was born,” he told Blitzer in the interview. “There’s something that bothers Obama very much. I will tell you: It’s not an issue that he likes talking about, so what he does is use reverse psychology on people like you. … He does not like that issue because it’s hitting very close to home. You know it, and he knows it – but you don’t report it accurately.”
The heated exchange between Blitzer and Trump can be seen here.
On his show, Todd told Paterson Romney has “thrown his reputation down the drain,” and he called Trump a “bully” and the nation’s best-known “conspiracy theorist.”
“George W. Bush wouldn’t have allowed his campaign to be bullied. Neither would John McCain. … This guy only cares about Donald Trump. He doesn’t care about Mitt Romney,” Todd said.
“I don’t understand this at all. …. Things are going [Romney’s] way. Romney, I thought, has been on the best roll in the last six weeks that he’s ever been in his life,” Paterson said.
Many media commentators believe Trump’s comments have put Romney in an awkward position. Romney has said he believes Obama was born in the U.S., but Democrats have criticized him for not distancing himself from Trump.
Even Obama took aim at the pair by releasing a video “highlighting Mitt Romney’s failure to condemn Donald Trump’s over-the-line rhetoric.”
“If Mitt Romney lacks the backbone to stand up to a charlatan like Donald Trump because he’s so concerned about lining his campaign’s pockets,” the Obama campaign said, “what does that say about the kind of president he would be?”
Romney has refused to condemn Trump, saying, “You know, I don’t agree with all the people who support me. My guess is they don’t agree with everything I believe in. But I need to get 50.1 percent or more and I’m appreciative to have the help of a lot of good people.”
For more than a year, Trump has consistently maintained he has doubts the Obama birth certificate released by the White House is genuine.
As WND reported in March 2011, Trump said Obama’s presidency could be “illegal” if legitimate proof is not provided demonstrating he is indeed a “natural born citizen” of the U.S.
Trump also wondered why no doctors or nurses have come forward to announce their presence at Obama’s birth.
In March and April of 2011, Trump staged a weeks-long public campaign questioning Obama’s eligibility to be president, rising to the top of the pool of potential candidates for the 2012 GOP nomination as a result.
“I always said I wanted to know if it was real,” Trump told WND senior reporter Jerome Corsi, author of the best-seller “Where’s the Birth Certificate? The Case That Barack Obama is Not Eligible to be President.”
During their conversation, Trump told Corsi his own computer expert told him that the image posted online was a computer-generated document.
Then, in March, the famous billionaire heaped praise on Sheriff Joe Arpaio for the Arizona lawman’s probe into the authenticity of Obama’s purported birth certificate and his eligibility for office.
Following the Maricopa County sheriff’s Cold Case Posse news conference March 1 in Phoenix, Trump personally penned a handwritten note of congratulations to Arpaio.
Having printed out an Associated Press report of the event that featured a photograph of Arpaio, Trump penned diagonally in the upper left hand corner, “Joe – Great going – You are the only one with the ‘guts’ to do this – Keep up the good fight – Donald Trump.”