GOV. JAN BREWER HAS A LAPSE INTO SANITY

(h/t HuffPo)

She appeared on CNN's John King USA show¹ on Monday and LexisNexis has the transcript:

KING: More of that conversation with Anderson and Donald Trump tonight at 10:00 Eastern on "A.C. 360."

The birther movement took a hit recently when the Arizona Jan Brewer vetoed a bill requiring presidential candidates to prove they were born in the United States before they would be allowed in her state's ballot.

Governor Brewer joins now us live from Phoenix.

Governor, it's good to see you.

I want to get to your vetoes. But I want to start with, when you hear people like Mr. Trump repeatedly saying -- despite all the documentary evidence that the president was born in Hawaii in 1961 -- should they just drop this and debate him on whether it's taxes or immigration or some other issue?

GOV. JAN BREWER (R), ARIZONA: Well, you know, it seems to me that we have talked about this issue now going on probably two years, and that I believe that most people have reached out and they did their investigations and it's become such a huge distraction, I for one -- I believe that from what I have seen and after speaking with governor -- or the prior governor of Hawaii that indeed he was born in Hawaii. It's just something that I think is leading our country down a path of destruction and it just is not serving any good purpose.

KING: Is it -- is it a vehicle for some people, some people, to hide maybe racism, to say that they don't want to come out and say they don't want to have a black president, an African-American president, so they are trying to find some other reason to disqualify him or to delegitimize him?

BREWER: Well, you know, John. You know, I can't speculate on that. You know, I think there was a point in time when people didn't really understand how birth certificates were kept in the state of Hawaii, and now, I think that it's been pretty much disclosed that they used to have a long form and now they don't have a long form. Arizona used to have a long form, we now have a short form.

But, you know, in regards to the bill that was passed and the one that I vetoed, it was such a huge distraction. It was a bridge way too far to give one person in the state of Arizona, a partisan person at that, the ability to keep a person off the ballot. And it wasn't just the president of the United States. It was all the way down the path of all elected officials.

So, it was something that I felt very uncomfortable with signing, having been a prior secretary of state. And I think we just really need to move on. Everybody has had two years to prove if they wanted to that he was not born in Hawaii. They haven't come up with any of that kind of proof. So, it just seems to me that it's more political rhetoric and that it takes the ball off the kinds of subjects that we all ought to be discussing and that would be jobs and the economy.

¹CNN
April 25, 2011 Monday
SHOW: JOHN KING, USA 7:00 PM EST
Demonstrations in Syria; NATO Airstrikes; Republican Presidential Candidates
BYLINE: John King, Arwa Damon, Frederik Pleitgen, David Gergen, Jessica Yellin, Frances Fragos Townsend, Gloria Borger
GUESTS: Gov. Jan Brewer, Dafna Linzer
SECTION: NEWS; International
LENGTH: 8207 words