Herman Cain Goes Birther: Obama Must ‘Prove He Was Born In The United States’

While not one candidate has yet declared a run for the 2012 GOP nomination, the race for most outlandish long-shot bid is heating up, with pizza mogul Hermain Cain seeinggolf course and hotel mogul Donald Trump’s birtherism with his own. Yesterday, in an interview with Florida conservative blog the Shark Tank, Cain said Trump is right to question President Obama’s birthplace, saying that he himself is unsure about Obama’s birthplace because he hasn’t hasn’t “studied” the issue enough:

INTERVIEWER: What do you think of [Trump's] lead? Do you think he’s off base with asking the president to supply his birth certificate?
CAIN: No, he’s not off base. Just like the people who have been challenging his place of birth for the last couple of years. It’s just not an issue that I have studied enough to have a view one way or the other. … I respect people that believe he should prove his citizenship. He should prove he was born in the United States of America.

But Cain is best known for his anti-Muslim bigotry. He told ThinkProgress last week that if he were elected president, he wouldn’t appoint a Muslim to his cabinet or the federal judiciary. He reiterated this in the Shark Tank interview, and added that anyone who takes the oath of office in a Herman Cain administration would have to swear to the Christian Bible:

CAIN: Now, I don’t know one Muslim who will denounce Sharia law and then say they support the Constitution. So my assumption based upon what I know about this belief system, is that they are not give up Sharia law. Anybody that takes the oath of office in a Herman Cain administration will put their hand on the Bible, not the Koran.

Watch it:

Cain’s demand that any member of his administration place their hand on the Christian Bible would likely make not just Muslims, but Jews, Hindus, or members of any other religion uncomfortable.