White House: ‘Birthers’ Aren’t ‘Rational’

Monday January 24, 2011

Here’s what you need to know from today’s White House briefing with press secretary Robert Gibbs:
– Gibbs hinted that President Obama will talk about gun rights in his State of the Union address. “I don’t doubt that, as a result of the impact – or the issues of what happened in Tucson, that there will be a number of proposals that this White House and the Congress will evaluate, and we’ll wait until tomorrow to see what’s in the State of the Union,” he said.
– Gibbs snuck a jab at the so-called birthers who don’t believe Obama was born in Hawaii. “I think rational people have — have long ago, many when they first heard and saw the president, come to the conclusion of his citizenship,” he said.
– The press secretary knocked down the suggestion that Obama has tacked to the ideological “center” after the midterms. He said Obama, despite recently hiring a handful of Clinton administration officials, is “still the same president that we’ve had for more than two years.”
– Both parties sitting together for the State of the Union is a “good step” in working together, Gibbs said, predicting “more collegiality, less acrimony and less partisanship” during the speech.