Good for PolitiFact:
Donald Trump began a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb. 10, 2011, by announcing that he is “thinking about” running for president. Too often, Trump said, successful people don’t run for president because they don’t want to be “scrutinized or abused.” As a result, he said, we get presidents like Barack Obama.
“Our current president came out of nowhere. Came out of nowhere,” Trump said. “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.”
The line drew big applause from the conservative audience. We tried unsuccessfully to reach Trump to see if he was suggesting that Obama led an unremarkable life during his school years, or if it was a wink to the conservative legions who are not convinced that Obama is a natural-born American citizen. …
In short, media accounts and biographies are filled with on-the-record, named classmates who remember Obama. Trump is certainly right that presidential candidates are heavily scrutinized. As even a basic online search confirms, Obama’s school years were, too. Trump’s claim that people who went to school with Obama “never saw him, they don’t know who he is” is ridiculous. Or, to borrow Trump’s phrase, it’s crazy. We rule Trump’s statement Pants on Fire.
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