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If anyone is interested in the true history of the question of Barack Obama's birth certificate, let me show you a documented history of this issue. As you will see:

It was NOT created by Donald Trump.
It was started by the Hillary Clinton campaign, though indirectly.
It was really started by Politifact, a fact-checking outfit initially a part of the St. Petersburg Times (Florida) as they attempted to debunk the Hillary Clinton campaign's smear attack.

Here is the evidential proof.

November 21, 2007: Clinton campaign Iowa volunteer Judy Rose (volunteer county chair) forwarded an anonymous chain email that had been circulating claiming that Obama was secretly Muslim and that his middle name was “Muhammad” to eight fellow Democrats, including a paid campaign staffer, Ryan Callanan.

See Politifact's later explanation on this from September 25, 2015: The Obama Muslim Myth: The Clinton connection.

In the fall of 2007, it was clear that Clinton was losing ground in Iowa. The presumptive front runner was vulnerable and people in the campaign knew it. On Dec. 5, 2007, the online magazine Politico posted the text of an email that had been forwarded by Judy Rose, the volunteer chair of the Clinton campaign in Jones County Iowa on Nov. 21, 2007. The email was a quintessential smear that offered a distorted biography of Obama’s early years. Rose offered no commentary on it. She simply passed it along.
"Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim," the email said, and it ended with, "The Muslims have said they plan on destroying the U.S. from the inside out, what better way to start than at the highest level - through the President of the United States , one of their own!!!!"
Rose, sent this to eight of her fellow Democrats. One of them was Clinton campaign staffer Ryan Callanan who replied to the email on the same day in November.
"I’ve gotten this forward before," Callanan wrote. "It’s racist and ignorant. I can’t believe that people believe this stuff."

December 5 or 6, 2007: The forwarded emails became public and the Clinton campaign terminated the volunteers, saying that the emails were "wholly unauthorized" and that the campaign was "totally unaware of it."

The public airing of the email brought a quick reaction from the Clinton campaign. On Dec. 6, 2007, the Associated Press reported that Rose had resigned as chair of her county committee.
"There is no place in our campaign, or any campaign, for this kind of politics," Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle said. "A volunteer county coordinator made the mistake of forwarding an outrageous and offensive chain e-mail. This was wholly unauthorized and we were totally unaware of it."
A few days later, a second volunteer in a different county stepped down when it was learned that she had forwarded a similar email in October.
These are the only two instances where Clinton campaign volunteers, much less staff, are known to have spread the false story about Obama’s religion.

March 5, 2008: "Velvet Hammer," an anonymous blogger posts the following: Wanted: Barack Hussein Obama’s Birth Certificate:

Excerpt:

My inquiring mind wants to know. Has anyone seen Obama’s birth certificate? Just to ease my curious mind, I would like to see it.
Should his birth certificate be in the public domain? Or not? I do not have a clue.

April 18, 2008: Politifact attempts to debunk to debunk the chain email rumor that has gained traction and was sent in by readers for evaluation. In their fact-check, Politifact matter-of-factly states that the Obama campaign declinded to provide a copy of his birth certificate: No Muhammed or Mohammed in Obama's name

Excerpt:

A chain e-mail that originates with a letter from American missionaries working in Kenya warns about Sen. Barack Obama's ties to Kenya and its opposition party, encouraging readers "not to be taken in by those that are promoting him."
Among the many allegations is one about Obama's name: "By the way. His true name is Barak Hussein Muhammed Obama. Won't that sound sweet to our enemies as they swear him in on the Koran! God bless you."
[snip]
Let's be clear: The senator from Illinois who is running for president of the United States is named Barack Hussein Obama Jr. His campaign has insisted that is his full name (no Muhammad). We've checked this before and found it to be blatantly wrong. But since the rumor persists, we decided to dig deeper.
We have now searched every public record we can access and find nothing to support the notion that Obama has a second middle name of "Muhammed" or "Mohammed." Only in the ether of chain e-mails does this allegation fly.
We have a copy of Obama's marriage certificate from the Cook County Bureau of Vital Statistics in Illinois. Barack H. Obama married Michelle L. Robinson on Oct. 3, 1992, in Chicago. (And, yes, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. officiated.)
We looked at Obama's driver's license record in the state of Illinois, and the name reads: Barack H Obama. (Senator, just a reminder that your license is up for renewal this year).
We searched property records for Obama and found listings under the names Barack Hussein Obama and Barack H Obama.
We also found Obama's registration and disciplinary record with the Attorney Registration & Disciplinary Commission of the Supreme Court of Illinois. ( You can see it here. ) Barack Hussein Obama was admitted as a lawyer by the Illinois Supreme Court on Dec. 17, 1991. (By the way, Obama has no public record of discipline.)
We tried to obtain a copy of Obama's birth certificate, but his campaign would not release it and the state of Hawaii does not make such records public.

This was the spark that lit the fuse.

June 9, 2008: Jim Geraghty of National Review picks up on the remark by Politifact and reports it on his blog: Obama Could Debunk Some Rumors By Releasing His Birth Certificate.

Excerpt:

Having done some Obama-rumor debunking that got praise from Daily Kos (a sign of the apocalypse, no doubt), perhaps the Obama campaign could return the favor and help debunk a bunch of others with a simple step: Could they release a copy of his birth certificate?
Reporters have asked for it and been denied, and the state of Hawaii does not make such records public.

June 10, 2008: Conservative journalist and blogger Michelle Malkin picks up on Geraghty's NRO blog post and amplifies it to her wider audience: The buzz about Barack’s birth certificate

Excerpt:

Jim Geraghty takes a look at longstanding blog buzz over Barack Obama’s birth certificate, which the campaign refused to release to the St. Petersburg Times in April:
We tried to obtain a copy of Obama’s birth certificate, but his campaign would not release it and the state of Hawaii does not make such records public.
Has anyone seen it? Why shouldn’t the record be in the public domain for presidential candidates?
Geraghty walks through various rumors now circulating in the wake of the Obama campaign’s birth certificate blackout...

June 12, 2008: The Barack Obama campaign releases a certificate of live birth to their "Fight The Smears" website and gives "The Daily Kos" website exclusive access to it.

tl;dr - It wasn't conservatives that started the "birther" rumor, it was Politifact and Obama himself when the Politifact reported that the Obama campaign refused to make public his birth certificate over what appeared to be a simple innocuous request to debunk rumors.

In the information vaccuum create by Politifact and the Obama campaign, the internet swooped in to fill the void.

-PJ