Barack Obama's birth certificate could kill off Donald Trump's ambitions

So Barack Obama has finally released his birth certificate, thus – he hopes – ending a national debate that was beginning to damage him seriously: one poll showed 38 per cent of Americans weren’t sure he was born in the US. What took him so long? The answer, I suspect, is that Obama couldn’t care less what conspiracy theories redneck Republicans construct around him: as so often with this president, it was hard to tell where common sense ended and arrogance began.
The “birther” movement is now dead as a political force, just as Donald Trump had begun to lend it credibility – and, make no mistake, the questions he raised about the President’s birthplace were beginning to show above the radar. It was Trump who forced the White House to act: an achievement, of sorts, but also one that makes his undeclared candidacy look even more preposterous than it did before.
We can, however, rest assured that hard-line, head-banging birthers won’t be satisfied by this evidence. On the contrary: as I write these words, they are poring over every pixel of the birth certificate photograph, identifying suspicious ink spots, lizard footprints and other signs that it’s AN OBVIOUS FAKE.