Senator Jeff Flake said on Monday that his distaste for President Trump goes back to the birther claims against former President Barack Obama.

Republican Senator Jeff Flake said on Monday that his distaste for President Trump goes back to the birther claims against former President Barack Obama. Flake told those gathered for a Forbes Magazine "30 under 30" event, "I could never warm to the president. Long before he ran, he talked about President Obama not being a citizen. I thought that, itself, is disqualifying."  That conspiracy had been in circulation for years prior to Trump's full embrace of it. In 2011, he began mentioning it in television interviews, in 2012 stated via Twitter that he'd been informed that Obama's birth certificate was a fake, and, in 2014, issued an open call to hackers to find out the "truth." He finally dropped the matter in September of 2016, just weeks before being elected as Obama's successor, notes the New York Times.