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‘Birther’ Leader On Colbert

Woman, born a Soviet Jew, warns of Obama

by
Allison Hoffman
July 29, 2009

Stephen Colbert welcomed Orly Taitz onto his Comedy Central show last night. Taitz is the California woman (whom I profiled yesterday for Tablet Magazine) who has become the de facto head of the so-called “birther” movement—the amorphous group of mostly conservative conspiracy theorists who insist, for various and changing reasons, that Barack Obama is not a “natural born citizen” and therefore ineligible to hold his current job. Taitz appeared excited to press her case to the Colbert Nation, earnestly telling her host, “If in Nazi Germany, the soldiers and the officers would have questioned the orders that came from the commander-in-chief”—Hitler, that is—“maybe 65 million people wouldn’t have died.” She also asserted, “I think we’re getting another Stalin.” That charge is particularly sensitive for her: she is herself a Soviet Jew who came to the U.S. in 1987 after six years in Israel. At this point, she told Colbert, there isn’t anything the president could say that would shake her doubts about his legitimacy. “He is a Chicago crook,” she explained.

It hasn’t been a great week for her cause: on Monday, House Republicans who had once appeared sympathetic to the birthers’ claims voted unanimously for a bill that stipulated that Obama was indeed born in Hawaii on August 4, 1961—which is what his, y’know, birth certificate says. Taitz told Tablet Magazine earlier this week that her real concern is that Obama could be some sort of “Manchurian candidate.” For whom, she wouldn’t say.

You can watch her appearance below.

Allison Hoffman is a senior editor at Tablet Magazine. Her Twitter feed is @allisont_dc.