> he also wasn't not-a-politician, having actively campaigned for the Reform Party nomination for President in 2000 (the Reform Party had qualified for federal matching funds, bringing out a lot of nontraditional contenders)
In the US, if all you've (yet) done is run for a third party, failing to even win its Presidential nomination-you are really (at that point in time) more of a would-be politician than an actual politician.
Trump wasn't even particularly notable among the Obama birthers, who were quite nunerous, except retrospectively; he also wasn't not-a-politician, having actively campaigned for the Reform Party nomination for President in 2000 (the Reform Party had qualified for federal matching funds, bringing out a lot of nontraditional contenders) before abandoning the effort in February 2000, shortly after Jesse Ventura, who had convinced him the Reform Party was the right vehicle for his political ambitions, left the party. At the time of the Obama election, Trump was a politician who hadn't succeeded looking for an in with a major party core constituency, and grabbing on to the widespread birther conspiracies as a means of achieving that.