“I am closer than ever,” Sheriff Joe Arpaio declared to an assembled crowd in Maricopa county on Tuesday, vowing to continue his investigation into the legitimacy of president Obama’s American citizenship.

Despite the fact that his good buddy Donald Trump said last week that Obama was an American citizen “period,” Sheriff Joe says that his investigation fights on.

“I’m not going to give up, and we’re looking into it. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out.”

Until now, the racist sheriff and Trump’s birtherism walked hand-in-hand, so this departure is significant, though the sheriff says there are no hard feelings.

“I had nothing to do with Trump on the birth certificate. We did it on our own, because of you guys.”

“You guys” in this instance referring to the Surprise Tea Party, which requested that Arpaio look into the birth certificate issue back in 2011 – despite 5 years passing, he hasn’t found the evidence he has looked so desperately for.

Others demurred to offer their opinion of Trump’s birther flip-flop, but said that Trump’s remarks were “strategic,” and that “He said he was born in the United States. He didn’t say it was a true document.”

It appears that, as desperate conspiracies are wont to do, this one has spun so far out of control that birthers are willing to say that Obama was born in America, but that for whatever reason, his document certifying it so is false. It’s stupid all the way down, boys.