Donald Trump played the mainstream media like a Charlie Daniels fiddle today — and it was music to my ears. He was holding court inside his brand new Washington, DC, hotel while breathless reporters and drooling anchors jumped into wall-to-wall coverage waiting to hear Trump apologize. And he kept them waiting and waiting and waiting. Reporters thought he was going to launch into a tearful, soul-searching mea-culpa over President Obama’s birth certificate. But it turned out he resolved the issue lickety-split. “Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it,” Trump said. “President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period. Now we all want to get back to making America strong and great again.”

Mr. Trump was referencing a memorandum written by Mark Penn, her chief strategist at the time. In a memorandum obtained by The Atlantic, Penn recommended taking advantage of Obama’s “lack of American roots.” You can read the memorandum by clicking here. Now, the folks over at Politifact denied the Clinton campaign had anything to do with the birther issue. They said it appears to have been started by Democrats supporting her and opposing Obama.

But Mr. Penn’s memorandum was thoroughly covered by the mainstream media — the Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg, Politico and even those unfortunate souls over at MSNBC. Regardless of the truth, I doubt the Clinton campaign or her followers in the mainstream media will let the issue die. Brian Fallon, Clinton’s spokes-dude, tweeted this: “Trump doubled down on lie-filled statement from his campaign last night & took no responsibility for his bigoted attacks on our President.” One final thought: The issue was not whether President Obama was born in America. It’s whether President Obama is proud to be an American.