Maddow: Romney campaign 'playing along' with birthers

Wednesday night on "The Rachel Maddow Show," host Rachel Maddow examined the role of Donald Trump in the campaign of former Massachusetts governor and Republican nominee for president Mitt Romney. On a day that saw the release of Romney's embarrassing iPhone app and a badly-written gun policy memo which assured us that the candidate will support Americans' right to "hunt, shoot, and protect their families," the competition to be the most embarrassing member of the Romney organization was pretty fierce.

Nonetheless, reality-show star, casino magnate and hotelier Donald Trump ran away with the honors again by dragging birtherism back into the mainstream. At a lavish Las Vegas fundraiser last night, the two men managed to refrain from openly questioning the president's citizenship, but in an interview with Fox News's Greta van Susteren later that night, Trump stated once again, unequivocally, that he does not believe the president was born in the United States.

This should present a major problem for the Romney campaign, and yet, they have doubled down on their support for Trump and reiterated that they're glad to have him aboard. Maddow said that this gives Romney some serious credibility problems because he's "piping that argument from the sea of kookery in to the conservative mainstream," and giving more ammunition to people like former congressman Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), who has proposed a "birther amendment" to the Constitution.

Watch this clip, which aired May 30, and is embedded via MSNBC, below:

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