Perry Meets Trump, Says “I Don’t Know” Obama Birth Certificate Is Real

Rick Perry, falling fast in the GOP presidential candidate polls, says he doesn’t know that the birth certificate President Obama released in April is real, after he had a meeting with birther conspiracist and former GOP presidential candidate dangler Donald Trump. Trump’s entire platform consisted of questioning President Obama’s credibility based upon Trump’s inability to prove Obama was not born a U.S. citizen.

READ: Rick Perry’s Texas Is First — In Illiteracy, Repeat Teen Births, Pollution…

Think Progress offers this transcript from Parade Magazine:

Governor, do you believe that President Barack Obama was born in the United States?
I have no reason to think otherwise.

That’s not a definitive, “Yes, I believe he”— 
Well, I don’t have a definitive answer, because he’s never seen my birth certificate.

But you’ve seen his.
I don’t know. Have I?

You don’t believe what’s been released?
I don’t know. I had dinner with Donald Trump the other night.

And?
That came up.

And he said?
He doesn’t think it’s real.

To his “credit,” Perry calls the issue, which he continued to stir, “distractive.”

In the Parade interview, Perry, who says he voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976 because, somehow, growing up in Texas, “I never met a Republican until I was 25,” and because Carter was a “peanut farmer from Georgia,” also offered the following:

“Americans are looking for somebody to stand up and tell them the truth, and I have a record to back it up. Ultimately, if I can explain my heart, my jobs record, and my philosophy to Americans, I’m pretty confident that I’ll win.”

“I think, for young and mid-career people, [social security] is a Ponzi scheme.”

“I truly believe the science is not settled on the issue of man-made global warming.”

Perry calls George Washington, Sam Houston, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, and Winston Churchill “the five most influential men in history.”

and to the question,

“Governor, you’re a very successful fund-raiser. But it’s been reported that nearly half of the major donors during your governorship ended up receiving business contracts, political appointments, or tax breaks. The word that’s been applied to you is ‘cronyism.’ How do you respond?”

Perry responds,

“That’s the same old, tired criticism which comes when people don’t want to talk about the real issues, like how do we create jobs.”

Which, he doesn’t answer, either. Probably good, since Perry lies twice as often as he tells the truth.

One question that didn’t make the interview: Niggerhead.