WASHINGTON – The Republican Party should have done more to shut down the birther movement that Donald Trump led, one GOP senator said Sunday. “I wish that we, as a party, would have stood up, for example, when the birtherism thing was going along,” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “A lot of people did stand up but not enough.” Long before he was a presidential candidate, Trump led an effort to discredit President Obama by doubting he was a US citizen. Obama was born in Hawaii.