Trump Questions Obama's Birth Records

FOX's Bill O'Reilly is taking Donald Trump to task for continuing to question whether President Obama was really born in the United States.

"His mother was a hippie. His father was a Kenyan who split," O'Reilly said to Trump on The O'Reilly Factor Wednesday, "What is he? Baby Jesus? There couldn't have been a sophisticated conspiracy to smuggle this baby back into the country."

O'Reilly said he dismissed the issue long ago, and questions why Trump isn't doing the same.

"Very early on, we did an investigation about Barack Obama's birth certificate and what The Factor found out was there were two birth announcements the week he was born in Honolulu," O'Reilly said, "That is impossible to make happen if he had not been born in the hospital."

Trump says he has never seen a birth announcement in a newspaper.

"Here's what I ask people: Who puts announcements? Here are two poor people, a man and a woman with no money, who have a baby. There's announcements in the newspaper?"

"Sure, there are birth announcements all the time," O'Reilly said.

"I've never seen one," said Trump.

"Really? They're common." said O'Reilly.

"No," Trump responded, "I've never seen one."

President Obama's birth announcements appeared in The Honolulu Advertiser and The Honolulu Star-Bulletin after he was born on August 4th, 1961. The newspapers have since merged, becoming The Honolulu-Star Advertiser.

A woman who answered the phone in the paper's newsroom said birth announcements are printed free of charge. She said the information comes from Hawaii's Department of Vital Statistics, and the newspaper pays for that list. The paper's features department will also take birth announcement submissions directly from families, but they have to provide a copy of the child's birth certificate.

Trump told O'Reilly he's seen what geniuses on Wall Street can do in terms of fraud and says if President Obama has a real birth certificate he suspects there might be something on it he doesn't want Americans to see.

"He may have one, but there is something on that birth certificate. Maybe religion. Maybe it says he's a Muslim. I don't know. Maybe he doesn't want that. Or he may not have one. I will tell you this: if he wasn't born in this country, it's one of the great scams of all time."

"Absolutely," O'Reilly responded, "But I don't think that's the case."