release his long form birth certificate now. if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers. when i gave a speech about my budget and how i felt that we needed to invest in education and infrastructure and during that entire week, the dominant news story wasn t about huge monumental choices we re going to have to make as a nation, it was about my birth certificate. joining me now is nbc white house correspondent, mike i h e viquei viqueira. the president sent his personal lawyer at his own expense, not taxpayer expense to get the long form birth certificate but you have people wondering, why now? we talked about the surprise early this morning. you were there on the scene. reporter: the communication secretary held a briefing. what a surprise it was 8:45 this morning. we thought we were going to get a regular briefing about the news of the day, the debt, deficit, the president s trip to