(Donald Trump.AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
After largely refusing to talk about the discredited conspiracy theory for years, Donald Trump is teasing a major announcement about whether he still publicly doubts President Barack Obama's birthplace.
During an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business on Friday, the Republican presidential nominee hinted that he would address his current views on the conspiracy theory during a speech at the opening of his hotel in Washington, D.C. later Friday morning.
"We have to keep the suspense going, okay?" Trump said. "So you watch. You're my friend. You watch the statement, okay? I think you'll be happy."
Trump's campaign already released a statement Thursday declaring that the Republican presidential candidate "believes that President Obama was born in the United States," a departure from Trump's previous doubts about Obama's birthplace.
In the statement, Trump campaign senior communications adviser Jason Miller gave Trump credit for "compelling" Obama to release his birth certificate in 2012, and claimed the document put Trump's concerns to bed.
"Inarguably, Donald J. Trump is a closer. Having successfully obtained President Obama’s birth certificate when others could not, Mr. Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States," Miller said in the statement.
However, earlier Thursday, Trump was unwilling to say that Obama was born in the US. He has declined to do so numerous times during the campaign season.
"I'll answer that question at the right time,” Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post. “I just don’t want to answer it yet."
The campaign statement also conflicts with several tweets Trump made after April 27, 2011, the date Obama released his long-form birth certificate. In the tweets, Trump cast doubt on the veracity of the document.
Read the full Trump statement below:
"Hillary Clinton's campaign first raised this issue to smear then-candidate Barack Obama in her very nasty, failed 2008 campaign for President. This type of vicious and conniving behavior is straight from the Clinton Playbook. As usual, however, Hillary Clinton was too weak to get an answer. Even the MSNBC show Morning Joe admits that it was Clinton’s henchmen who first raised this issue, not Donald J. Trump.