Now, with Trump making a belatedly and almost certainly ill-fated attempt to appeal to black voters in the last few days, the issue has somewhat resurfaced. Trump scolded a local reporter for asking him about it, laughably insisting that he doesn’t talk about the subject any more (I’ll bet Hillary would love to be able to get away with that gambit regarding her email scandal!). Then Rudy Giuliani insisted on CNN that Trump should not apologize for his “Birtherism.” (By the way, Giuliani claiming “Birtherism” began with Hillary is a typical right-wing canard. Hillary “supporters” may have started the movement, but not her or her campaign. I find it hilarious that Trump supporters somehow take comfort knowing he took a very low-level leftist conspiracy theory and gave it real life in a way which humiliated him.)

It is my view that much of the public either has very limited knowledge of Trump’s role in this fiasco, or has completely forgotten it. It is not as if this is ancient history or not directly related to his judgement to be president of the Unites States (especially when his “racist” rhetoric has been an issue and he has so far refused to engage in the type of record transparency he demanded from Obama by simply releasing his tax returns).

So why has the media not obsessed over an issue which would seem to achieve many of their objectives?

The conspiratorial theory is that the news media wants/needs the race to remain “close” until the very end for ratings purposes and are simply saving this and other deadly issues for if/when they need to really take Trump out at the end of the campaign. While I think this theory is plausible, and consistent with the reality that Trump tends to get worse coverage as he does better in the polls, it probably gives the news media too much credit.