Bill Ayers: Yeah, I wrote “Dreams from My Father” 
 
 posted at 9:08 pm on March 28, 2011 by Allahpundit 
 
 Via the American Thinker. I think John Hawkins is spot on in detecting the sarcasm here, but if you’re inclined to believe that Ayers is The One’s ghostwriter, you’re bound to detect a “deeper truth” in his tone. In fact, Ayers has been baiting people with this same corny line about splitting the royalties for ages. Back in October 2009, a conservative blogger spotted him in Reagan Airport and approached him. As soon as she mentioned that she was conservative, he offered, unprompted, that he had written the book, that Michelle Obama had put him up to it, and, yes, that he’d be happy to split the royalties with the blogger if she could prove it. When she countered that she thought he had at least edited it, he egged her on by insisting that no, he had written the darned thing. I think he enjoys mocking people who push this idea and enjoys it doubly when they can’t detect the mockery. In fact, I’d bet that this is his stock response anytime the book is mentioned in his presence — insisting that he wrote it to see if the listener laughs and then toying with them if they seem credulous. But as I say, your mileage may vary. 
 
 Related Posts: ||||| “That first book was total genius and helped get him elected,” Trump continued. “But you can tell Obama did the second book himself because it read like it was written by somebody of average intelligence with a high school education.” 
 
 Did I mention that, in his letter, Trump complained about my calling him a “birther” because the word was “very derogatory and meant in a derogatory way”? Obama, of course, graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School — if you can believe Columbia and Harvard Law. 
 
 “Three weeks ago I thought he was born in this country. Right now I have some real doubts. I have people that actually have been studying it, and they cannot believe what they’re finding,” Trump announced on “ Today .” 
 
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 Trump does not actually seem to have people studying, or even Googling. Still, he sounds very self-assured. This is because before he was a reality-show host, he was in the New York real estate business, a profession in which it is vital to be able to say imaginary things with total certainty. (“I have five other people who are begging me to sell them this property. Begging.”) 
 
 Let’s run over some of his arguments: 
 
 THE GRANDMOTHER STORY “His grandmother in Kenya stated, on tape, that he was born in Kenya and she was there to watch the birth,” Trump wrote. This goes back to a trans-Atlantic telephone call that was made in 2008 by Ron McRae, an Anabaptist bishop and birther, to Sarah Obama, the president’s 86-year-old stepgrandmother. He asked her, through an interpreter, whether she was “present when he was born in Kenya.” The translator responded: “She says, yes, she was. She was present when Obama was born.” 
 
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 It is at this point that some of the tapes floating around the Web stop, which means that the listener doesn’t get to hear the follow-up, which makes it very clear that Sarah Obama misunderstood. The full conversation ends with the interpreter saying, for the umpteenth time: “ Hawaii . She says he was born in Hawaii. In the state of Hawaii, where his father, his father was learning there. The state of Hawaii.” 
 
 THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE If only Hawaii made its birth records public, and charged people a thousand dollars a pop to look at them, the state’s budget problems would be solved by the conspiracy theorists. However, it doesn’t. If you were born in Hawaii and request a copy of your birth certificate, you get a certification of live birth, which the federal government accepts for passports. Barack Obama requested his in 2007, and his campaign posted it on the Internet. 
 
 “A certificate of live birth is not even signed by anybody. I saw his. I read it very carefully. It doesn’t have a serial number. It doesn’t have a signature,” said Trump on “Today.” 
 
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 The document has the stamped signature of the state registrar. The University of Pennsylvania ’s FactCheck.org made a pilgrimage to the Obama campaign headquarters, examined the document, felt the seal, checked the serial number and reported that it looked fine. 
 
 THE EMPTY PHOTO ALBUM “Our current president came out of nowhere. Came out of nowhere,” Trump told the Conservative Political Action Conference to great applause. “In fact, I’ll go a step further. The people that went to school with him, they never saw him; they don’t know who he is. It’s crazy.” 
 
 This week on CNN, Suzanne Malveaux played Trump clips of Hawaiians reminiscing about the schoolchild Obama for a documentary the network had done on the president. 
 
 “Look, I didn’t say that ... If he was 3 years old or 2 years old or 1 year old and people remember him, that’s irrelevant,” Trump responded. “You have to be born in this country.”
– Donald Trump isn’t content with questioning Obama’s citizenship—now he’s questioning his authorial accomplishments, too. In an interview with Laura Ingraham yesterday, Trump espoused the theory that Bill Ayers wrote Obama’s memoir, Dreams of My Father, Aol News reports. Obama is only the president “because he wrote a book that is supposed to be a great genius book,” Trump said. “But now it’s coming out that Bill Ayers wrote it.” Trump’s repeating a rumor that’s been circling in right-wing media. Ayers himself said that he had written the book at a speaking appearance last week, though as Allahpundit at the conservative blog Hot Air notes, it sounded a lot like he was being sarcastic. “Would you believe that I wrote it?” he said when asked about the book. “And if you can help me prove it, I’ll split the royalties.” At that the audience burst out laughing. Ayers has reportedly used the line, complete with the royalties punch line, in the past as well. Click for more.