G. Gordon Liddy, the man behind the first Watergate break-in and founding father of the “wacko wing” of the Republican party is now claiming that President Obama is an “undocumented illegal alien.” This afternoon, an oddly “catatonoic” Liddy told Chris Matthews that he has a written deposition from President Obama’s step-grandmother where she says that Obama was born in a hospital in Mombasa:
MATTHEWS: He [Obama] wasn’t born here and he’s never gone through a naturalization that you know of, right?
LIDDY: Not that I know of.
MATTHEWS: Therefore he’s here illegally. You’re saying he’s an undocumented alien.
LIDDY: Illegal alien.
MATTHEWS: You’ve said he was born in the Kenyan slums. That means he’s an illegal alien. That means he’s not only illegally president, he’s illegal in the US and he ought to be picked up…by your account he’s illegally in the country…how would you claim he was born in the Kenyan slums? You say that as if it were a fact…Do we have any evidence it ever happened?…
LIDDY: Yeah, I’ve got the deposition of the step-grandmother who said she witnessed it.
Watch it:
Liddy is the promoter of several anti-immigrant conspiracy theories. Last year, he claimed that immigrants come from Mexico because “they want to reconquer America.” When discussing the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor earlier this year, Liddy criticized her membership in the Latino civil rights group, National Council of La Raza. He said La Raza, in “illegal alien,” [Spanish] means “race.”
Update:
On his radio show, Liddy frequently hosts “birther” Jerome Corsi to discuss his conspiracy theories.
Update:
,Alex Koppelman looks more into Liddy’s claim:
What Liddy was referring to is actually an affidavit filed by a street preacher named Ron McRae, who conducted an interview with Sarah Obama, the second wife of President Obama’s grandfather, through a translator. (Sarah Obama is not the president’s biological grandmother, but he calls her “Granny Sarah.”)
In that interview, Sarah Obama does in fact say at one point that she was there for her grandson’s birth. But that was a mistake, a confusion in translation. As soon as a jubilant McRae began to press her for further details about her grandson being born in Kenya, the family realized the mistake and corrected him. And corrected him. And corrected him. (The audio is available for download here.)