U.S. President Barack Obama (R) greets President-elect Donald Trump at inauguration ceremonies swearing in Trump as president on the West front of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., January 20, 2017. [File, Carlos Barria, Reuters]
By the year 2011, Donald Trump, who was then a media personality and businessman, had become the most visible proponent of the ‘birtherism’. Loaded with pejorative overtones, ‘birtherism’ was the sensational conspiracy theory that Barrack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore ineligible to serve as the President of the United States of America.