Thread: Trump says Cruz’s Canadian birth could be ‘very precarious’ for GOP

Trump says Cruz’s Canadian birth could be ‘very precarious’ for GOP

By Robert Costa and Philip Rucker January 5 at 8:11 PM

LOWELL, Mass. — Donald Trump said in an interview that rival Ted Cruz’s Canadian birthplace was a “very precarious” issue that could make the senator from Texas vulnerable if he became the Republican presidential nominee.

“Republicans are going to have to ask themselves the question: ‘Do we want a candidate who could be tied up in court for two years?’ That’d be a big problem,” Trump said when asked about the topic. “It’d be a very precarious one for Republicans because he’d be running and the courts may take a long time to make a decision. You don’t want to be running and have that kind of thing over your head.”

Trump added: “I’d hate to see something like that get in his way. But a lot of people are talking about it and I know that even some states are looking at it very strongly, the fact that he was born in Canada and he has had a double passport.”

Cruz responded to Trump’s comments on Twitter later Tuesday evening by referring to an iconic episode of the sitcom “Happy Days,” in which the character Fonzie jumps over a shark on water skis. The image has become a symbol of something shopworn and overdone.

Trump’s remarks — part of a backstage interview before a rally here Monday night — come as Cruz is rising as a serious threat in the presidential campaign, especially in Iowa, where some polls have shown Cruz eclipsing the billionaire mogul. The two have had a cordial and at times even friendly relationship over the past year, but they are competing intensely for the support of conservatives as the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses draw near.

There have been recent signs of tension. At a rally last month in Iowa, Trump told voters of Cruz: “Just remember this — you’ve got to remember, in all fairness, to the best of my knowledge, not too many evangelicals come out of Cuba, okay? Just remember that . . . just remember.”

In the interview with The Washington Post, Trump said he was providing a candid assessment of his leading opponent rather than initiating a personal attack and reviving the “birther” debate that he once led against President Obama. He repeatedly said he is hearing chatter on the topic among voices on the right. “People are bringing it up,” he said.

Trump has veered from shrugging off the issue to raising more questions himself. In an interview with ABC News in September, Trump said he did not think Cruz’s birthplace was an issue. “I hear it was checked out by every attorney and every which way and I understand Ted is in fine shape,” he said.

But months earlier in Iowa, Trump told reporters that it could be a “difficult problem.”

“He’s a friend of mine. I have great respect for him. . . . certainly it’s a stumbling block, and he’s going to have to have it solved before he goes too far,” Trump said, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Speaking late Tuesday in Sioux Center, Iowa, Cruz laughed off questions about Trump’s comment, saying he would let his campaign’s “Happy Days” tweet speak for itself.

When pressed, Cruz turned it back to the media, saying the focus should be on substantive issues.

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz has been complimenting one of his 2016 rivals, businessman Donald Trump, for months. Now, Trump is warming up to Cruz, too. Here's what the two men have had to say about one another on the political trail. (The Washington Post)

“And one of the things that the media loves to do is gaze at their navels for hours on end by a tweet from Donald Trump or from me or from anybody else. Who cares?” he said. When asked why he would tweet a video clip, he said: “Why do it? Because the best way to respond to this kind of attack is to laugh it off and move on to the issues that matter.”

Despite this, Cruz maintains he still likes Trump and doesn’t intend to throw insults.

The Constitution requires a president to be a “natural-born citizen.” Anyone born to a U.S. citizen is granted citizenship under U.S. law, regardless of where the birth takes place, as long as the citizen parent has resided in the United States or its territories for a certain period of time. At the time of Cruz’s birth, the required period was at least 10 years, including five years after the age of 14.

Cruz’s mother was a U.S. citizen when he was born in Calgary in 1970; his father was born in Cuba. Cruz has long said that because his mother is a citizen by birth, he is one as well and fits under the definition of a natural-born citizen. Since his election to the Senate, Cruz has released his birth certificate and renounced his Canadian citizenship.

Legal scholars agree that Cruz meets the Constitution’s natural-born citizenship requirement, though it is untested in the courts.

Several previous presidential candidates have run for office with similar backgrounds, such as Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the 2008 Republican nominee, who was born in the Panama Canal Zone to U.S. citizens.

In the interview, Trump alluded to an ongoing lawsuit in Vermont, where a man is trying to keep three Republican presidential candidates, including Cruz, off the ballot. According to the Rutland Herald, the lawsuit names state officials as defendants.

Trump has long flirted with “birtherism,” questioning Obama’s love of country and legal claim to the presidency. He supported efforts to investigate Obama’s birth in Hawaii and often suggested that the president was born outside the country.

Trump’s crusade reached its zenith in 2011, when Obama felt obliged to publicly release his long-form birth certificate. The president then mocked Trump over the issue at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner that year. Since then, Trump has quieted his speculation about Obama’s birth, while still declining to accept Obama’s legitimacy as president.

Katie Zezima in Sioux Center, Iowa, contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...1de_story.html

Trump has veered from shrugging off the issue to raising more questions himself. In an interview with ABC News in September, Trump said he did not think Cruz’s birthplace was an issue. “I hear it was checked out by every attorney and every which way and I understand Ted is in fine shape,” he said.

Not much has changed since September except Cruz's position in in the polls.

A natural born citizen is a person born on US soil to 2 US citizen parents, who has never had or been eligible for citizenship in another country by birth.

Cruz's situation is worse than Obama's because Cruz wasn't born in the United States and was given foreign citizenship that he just renounced less than 2 years ago.

It's the epitome of ineligible under the US Constitution.

Originally Posted by MW

Not much has changed since September except Cruz's position in in the polls.

Trump had already come out months earlier stating it was a problem for Cruz. In September he was asked that at the Iran Nuclear protest and I don't think Trump wanted to make Ted's eligibility an issue in the news when they're trying to bring attention to the badness of the Iran Nuclear Deal, so he sloughed it out or told the reporter what Cruz had told him or whatever.

But it's definitely a problem, because he's not eligible, not only because he wasn't born here but because both his parents weren't US citizens at the time of his birth. Obama was ineligible also, whether he was born in Hawaii or not, because only one of his parents was a US citizen, his father of course being Kenyan.

Most people think it's just born on US soil, it's not, it's born on US soil to 2 US citizen parents. That's the only way to meet the test definition of natural born citizen which means sole citizenship by birth, no other possible and no way to dispute it.

Excerpt:

Let’s review:

According to the Constitution, a presidential candidate must be a “natural born citizen” of the United States.

While Cruz received U.S. citizenship through his American mother, he was a Canadian citizen by virtue of his birth, the Dallas Morning Newsdiscovered in 2013.

While some conservatives –and Donald Trump—have questioned Cruz’s presidential eligibility, and the Supreme Court has never weighed in on the subject, many legal experts believe his Canadian citizenship didn’t disqualify him from running for president. Both John McCain and George Romney ran for president, despite being born in the Panama Canal Zone and Mexico, respectively.

The most recent defense of Cruz’s eligibility came in a recent article in the Harvard Law Review, where two lawyers who worked in the Bush and Obama administrations argued that Cruz’s mother’s citizenship and his father’s status as a U.S. resident covered the Constitution’s requirement.
“Despite the happenstance of a birth across the border, there is no question that Senator Cruz has been a citizen from birth and is thus a ‘natural born Citizen’ within the meaning of the Constitution,” wrote Paul Clement, a Bush administration solicitor general and Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general in the Obama administration.

Cruz vowed to “renounce any Canadian citizenship” following the initial reporting in 2013.
“Nothing against Canada, but I’m an American by birth and as a U.S. Senator, I believe I should be only an American,” he said in a statement in 2013.

Cruz formally renounced his citizenship in an official "Canadian Renunciation Letter" on May 14, 2014.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ted-c...ry?id=29846887

I don't think lawyers will decide this one, I think voters will. Most Americans know what a natural born citizen is and has always been, it's someone born in the US to two US citizens with no foreign national or foreign soil in the mix. The only time American voters have discounted this was the special consideration they afforded Obama, but since in his first race, McCain had the same problem, you can't really blame the voters for two candidates neither one of which were even eligible.

Given the history and poor performance, I don't think American voters will allow that to happen again.

And for the record, Marco Rubio isn't eligible either, because neither one of his parents were US citizens when he was born here.

You know we sit here and all wonder why we don't recognize our own country. This is what happens with foreign influence. We wrongfully hand out citizenship to children of immigrants and illegal aliens and wrongfully allow ineligible candidates to run for President. There are good reasons, valid reasons, why we have these protections and there is no justification to fritter them away out of stupidity or weakness.

Originally Posted by Judy

I don't think lawyers will decide this one, I think voters will. Most Americans know what a natural born citizen is and has always been, it's someone born in the US to two US citizens with no foreign national or foreign soil in the mix. The only time American voters have discounted this was the special consideration they afforded Obama, but since in his first race, McCain had the same problem, you can't really blame the voters for two candidates neither one of which were even eligible.

Given the history and poor performance, I don't think American voters will allow that to happen again.

And for the record, Marco Rubio isn't eligible either, because neither one of his parents were US citizens when he was born here.

You know we sit here and all wonder why we don't recognize our own country. This is what happens with foreign influence. We wrongfully hand out citizenship to children of immigrants and illegal aliens and wrongfully allow ineligible candidates to run for President. There are good reasons, valid reasons, why we have these protections and there is no justification to fritter them away out of stupidity or weakness.

Unless the U.S. Supreme Court gets involved, its already been decided. He's eligible.