Jonathan Swan of Axios asked Jared Kushner as straightforward a question as possible: Is “birtherism” racist?

How did Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior policy adviser answer the direct question? “I wasn’t there,” Kushner said. Swan persisted. “I know you weren’t,” he said. “Is it racist?”

Kushner didn’t answer it again. One or two more times he avoided answering the question with the same lame non-answer, that he “wasn’t there.”

Well, I will answer it for him. Yes. Not just “yes,” but hell yes it’s racist!

It is the lie that the president kept alive for years, even after he ascended to the nation’s highest office. He sought to discredit the election of the nation’s first African-American president by fomenting the lie that he was ineligible to run for the office because he was born in a foreign country.

Oh, never mind that Barack Obama told us repeatedly he was born in August 1961 in Hawaii. Or that — reportedly at Trump’s insistence — he produced a birth certificate that validates what he had said all along.

Why did Donald Trump keep insisting that this racist mantra was true? Did he really believe it? Did he keep pitching it merely because of the racial makeup of the president of the United States?

The term never even was widely known prior to Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy. Therefore, to my ears, the “birtherism” was born of a mindset that adheres to a sick, racist policy.

Hmm. Imagine that.