Lou Dobbs: Questioning Obama’s birth certificate ‘common sense’

Former CNN host Lou Dobbs told Esquire magazine in an interview published Monday, that his attempts to question the validity of President Barack Obama's birth certificate were valid

This declaration comes despite the fact that claims that Obama's birth certificate has not been produced, or was forged have long been debunked. "I ask a question, and I am attacked from the extreme Left as a quote-unquote birther," Dobbs told the magazine. "I mean, what the hell is that? When you can create a controversy by asking what seems to me still a perfectly commonsense question? It has been used in the extreme Left to create a toxicity that is just unbelievable." Dobbs is no stranger to hot button issues, and in his last few years on CNN, devoted his show almost entirely to immigration issues. Though Dobbs now claims his stance on the issue has been spun against him. "I'm actually pro-immigrant," Dobbs said. "There's not a restrictionist bone in my body." "There aren't twenty million illegal immigrants because of a choice made by the voting electorate of the country. There are twenty million illegal immigrants in this country because a good part of the establishment made a decision to exploit labor." He added. However, in recent years, Dobbs has made some claims that come off as less than pro-immigrant, including one show in which his guest claimed that there had been over 7,000 leprosy cases in the United States over the last three years, and that those cases could be directly linked to illegal immigration. When Dobbs later appeared on "60 Minutes" Lesley Stahl challenged his assertions, claiming U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had those same 7,000 cases occuring over the last 30 years, not three. Dobbs shot back that if his show reported it, it had to be true. Dobbs stepped down from CNN in November of 2009