Liberal Forum

Ben Carson says Trump should apologize for his birtherism. But Trump can’t even quit birtherism.

Top Trump backer Ben Carson says Trump should apologize for raising the birther conspiracy theories.

I think that would be a good idea," Carson told CNN's Jake Tapper Tuesday afternoon when asked whether Trump should do so in the name of appealing to African Americans who might have been turned off by it. "Absolutely."

Birtherism hasn't been a big part of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign.

But that's largely a matter of emphasis,- not any actual change in his position.

And in fact, if you look at his comments, Trump is basically as much of a birther as he was before, with the exact same point of view framed in more or less the exact same way: He's just a guy who asks questions.

When he led the effort a few years ago to question whether President Obama was actually born in the United States and was eligible to be president, Trump never technically said, "Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States."

He never had to.

He never said otherwise either -- and still hasn't.

To this day, he has never said that those questions have been laid to rest.

Now, he just tries to change the subject instead.

"I don't talk about it, because if I talk about that, your whole thing will be about that," Trump said Monday. "So I don't talk about it."

He doesn't say it's a non-issue.

He says it's an issue he'd rather not talk about.

That's an answer he's been giving for a while now.

Here's Trump in May:

"I don't talk about it anymore, because whenever I talk about it, it becomes a story."

And here's what he told CNN back in June: "I don't talk about it. You know why I don't talk about it?

Because once I talk about it, that's all they want to write about.

So I don't ever talk about it."

Trump added: "And I would love to.

But if I do talk about it, then what happens, is, that takes up -- then we're not talking about the horrible economy.

We're not talking about real unemployment in this country, which is close to 20 percent, when you add all the people that have given up looking for jobs.

We're not talking about ISIS."