After finally acknowledging that former President Barack Obama was born in the United States, Donald Trump has reportedly backpedaled to his initial birther claim.

READ: President Obama Says He ‘Absolutely’ Faced Racism In Office

Trump still privately questions the authenticity of Obama's birth certificate, with Trump having difficulty moving on from his past claims that Obama was not born in the United States, according an anonymous senator who spoke with the New York Times. As the one who incited the anti-Obama birther movement, Trump accused Obama of not being born in America for years.

"The fact is if he wasn't born in this country he shouldn't be the president of the United States," Trump had said previously. "Why doesn't he give his birth certificate? He says he has a birth certificate. So either they don't have one, which is very bad, or there's something on it he doesn't want people to see."

The birther movement was discussed in a CNN documentary on Obama earlier this year, where David Axelrod, Obama's former senior advisor, said that its roots were in "racism."

"There's no question about it. It's indisputable that there was a ferocity to the opposition and a lack of respect to him that was a function of race," Axelrod said in the documentary The Legacy Of Barack Obama.

Joe Arpaio, a former Arizona sheriff who was also pardoned by Trump, said that wanted to continue an investigation into Obama's birth certificate a couple months ago.

"It has to go down as the biggest cover-up in the history of the United States," Arpaio previously said, referring to Obama's birth certificate. "Nobody wants to touch it."

Source: nytimes.com