News
Harriet Marsden
Nov 15, 2016
Screenshot / YouTube
President-elect Donald Trump's campaign and rise to power have been riddled with factual inaccuracy, bizarre illogicality and downright ridiculousness.
(The fact that a white male billionaire reality TV star can somehow present himself as an anti-elite man of the people is a demonstrable masterclass in irony.)
But this hilarious 'birther' rumour about Trump being born outside the US takes the irony biscuit.
Last month, one Pakistani television network reported that Donald Trump is actually Dawood Ibrahim Khan, born in Pakistan.
According to Neo News, an Urdu-language outlet, Trump was born in the Waziristan region in 1954, to a Muslim family.
Apparently, after his parents were killed in a car accident, he was adopted by an American family.
Since Trump's election, the clip has gone viral, and although it's widely considered completely unfounded, people are still enjoying it.
According to Snopes, the image of the boy has been circulating since at least 2012. It was posted to Tumblr and credited to photographer Massoud Hossaini.
Furthermore, Trump released his own birth certificate in 2013 after clashing with comedian Bill Maher, which clearly states that he was born in Queens, New York.
Regardless: the idea that one picture of a young boy who vaguely resembles Trump is proof that he was born in Pakistan, is clearly nonsensical.
Nevertheless, some of Trump's most truth-defying moments included repeatedly attacking Barack Obama with 'birther' conspiracies, claiming the Hawaii-born president was actually born in Kenya and that his birth certificate was "a fraud".
And some of his most vicious rhetoric targeted Muslims and immigrants, calling them terrorists, threatening to deport them all and to ban them from entering the country.
So this turn of events is a pleasingly karmic twist.
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