DES MOINES, Iowa – Donald Trump, the main promoter of false birther allegations against then-President Barack Obama and then Sen. Ted Cruz, has a new target: Nikki Haley.
As Haley leads the polls in New Hampshire, Trump, on the Truth social media account, placed an article from a right-wing publication claiming that his GOP opponent was ineligible to be president because his parents were not US citizens at the time of his birth.
Haley was born in South Carolina and lived in the United States his whole life. His parents were immigrants and they received citizenship After his birth in 1972.
“The birther claims against Nikki Haley are completely without merit as a legal and constitutional matter,” Harvard Law School professor emeritus Laurence Tribe wrote in an email to NBC News. “I can’t imagine what Trump hopes to achieve with these claims, other than to play the race card against the former governor and UN ambassador as a woman of color and tap into the sources of anti-immigrant bias by reminding everyone of Haley’s claims. When he was born in the United States, his parents were not citizens.”
The 14th Amendment clearly states that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” are citizens. After the Civil War, it was passed to grant citizenship to formerly enslaved black Americans.
“Someone should tell him [Trump] The North won the Civil War, joked Law Director Bert Neuborne, professor emeritus at New York University School of Law and founding director of the Brennan Center for Justice.
“If you were born in the United States, the purpose of the 14th Amendment was to make you a citizen,” he said.
To be eligible for the presidency, a person must be a “natural citizen” who is at least 35 years old and has lived in the country for at least 14 years.
Trump claimed that “citizenship by birth“It should be taken away for the children of undocumented immigrants.
The Trump campaign did not provide any additional information when asked about the former president’s post on the social network.
The Haley campaign also did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
Trump often targets birther claims against people of color.
And so will Trump in 2020 reinforced a similar theory v. Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris was born in the United States to Jamaican and Indian immigrant parents.
Trump’s popularity among the far-right has risen largely because of his vocal acceptance of conspiracy theories based on the claim that Obama is unfit to be president because he was not born in Hawaii. Trump in 2011 continued the false allegations Obama’s birth certificate was fake.
And eight years ago, Trump did the same thing to upset Cruz, his rival for the Republican presidential nomination. Trump argued that the Texas senator was ineligible for the White House because he was born in Canada, even though his mother was a U.S. citizen at the time.
Trump used the birther claim to continually attack Cruz during his primary campaign and repeatedly threatened to sue [Cruz] for not being a natural born citizen,” although he was never threatened. Trump’s supporters often used Cruz’s birthplace attack nominated for the presidency.
At the time, lawyers strongly rejected this argument. Neil Kaytal, Acting Attorney General under Obama and Paul Clement, Attorney General under President George W. Bush, He wrote against the argument in the Harvard Law Review In 2015.
“However, as Congress has recognized since its founding, a person born abroad to a parent who is a U.S. citizen is generally a U.S. citizen by birth and does not need naturalization. The phrase “natural-born citizen” in the Constitution includes all such citizens by birth,” they wrote.
Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance called Trump’s suggestion of Haley’s eligibility “offensive,” but noted that it could ultimately be an issue that opens a fuller path to the courts.
“It’s an offensive question that goes against American values,” he told NBC News. “The Founding Fathers set the limit, but it’s hard to believe that it was intended to burden second-generation American citizens born on American soil like Nikki Haley. But despite this, the question of the term “natural citizen” has not been fully resolved in the courts, and perhaps Trump is dragging us into a more meaningless discussion in this area, as with the lies that were born about Obama. “