SC’s Clyburn: It’s time to expose Trump ‘for the fraud that he really is’

U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn Friday called Donald Trump “a fraud” who is “on a mission” to delegitimize President Barack Obama’s presidency.

The Columbia Democrat ripped the Republican presidential nominee after he finally acknowledged that the Democratic president was born in the country after years of leading the efforts to prove otherwise.

“These are in-your-face kind of efforts on the part of one man who is misusing the media in order to heap indignities upon the president of these United States,” Clyburn told reporters at a hastily assembled press conference with members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Clyburn warned Americans may wake up the day after the election regretting “what we could have done and did not do” if Trump becomes president.

“Let’s do what is necessary now to expose this man for the fraud that he really is,” he said.

In brief remarks earlier on Friday, Trump conceded Obama was born in Hawaii, but blamed Hillary Clinton for starting the rumors during her 2008 presidential campaign.

"I finished it. I finished it," Trump said. "You know what I mean. President Barack Obama was born in the United States. Period.”

Trump’s campaign event at his new Washington, D.C., hotel Friday was billed as a press conference, and most major cable networks carried it live. But he refused to take questions.

Clyburn said such easy manipulation of the media is partly to blame for legitimizing Trump’s candidacy.

“I used to be a part of the media, and I know how the media can be misused,” he said, referring to the weekly newspaper he used to own in Charleston. “I would hope that our media will begin to focus on informing the American people rather than regurgitate what this man has to say about anything.

He said that Trump’s comments went far beyond the usual “dog whistles” of a presidential campaign and, instead, were “the howls of wolves.”

“This man is on a mission to heap as much insult on this president, to do as much as he possibly can to delegitimize his presidency and play into a narrative that has been floated in this country for over 200 years,” he said.

This story was originally published September 16, 2016 at 3:19 PM.