WAVERLY, Iowa (AP) – Donald Trump taunted fellow Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz over his eligibility to be president on Saturday, offering the following response to Cruz’s instance that he’s a natural born citizen: “You’re not”. These days, and now that Cruz is ahead of Trump in the polls in Iowa, Trump has been slamming the Texas senator, claiming that Cruz’s immigration proposals mirror his and questioning the part-Cuban candidate’s Christianity. She is a citizen by birth, so I became an American citizen by virtue of being born to her. I have never breathed a breath of air on this planet when I was not a US citizen.
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As the US Constitution makes clear, only “natural born citizens” of the United States are eligible to hold the nation’s highest office.
“The child of a US citizen born overseas is a natural-born citizen”, Cruz said. Mr Cruz renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2014.
“Because we can’t be having a nominee – if he got the nod, I think I’m going to win very solidly, if you want to know the truth – but, if you get the nomination, you can’t have the person who gets the nomination be sued”, Trump said.
“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, according to The Post.
Trump’s main argument has been that Cruz is constitutionally unable to assume the White House, a position bolstered this week by prominent Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, who said he agreed with Trump. “Looking them in the eye”, Cruz told supporters.
“The Democratic contests in Iowa and New Hampshire could still go either way”, said Lee M. Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. Trump also earns more support from men and from voters without a college degree. “I don’t get it”, Trump said in the first of several references to Cruz in rambling remarks that spanned an hour.
“The only way to end it is to repeal that statute… we will repeal Obamacare, but unlike Obama, I don’t intend as president to be – to use his word – an emperor”, Cruz said.
“They become soft, they became weak and they disappeared”, he said. In an attempt to squash the legal threat, Cruz produced his mother’s birth certificate to the website “Breitbart”.
As far as his citizenship is concerned, Cruz believes he is more than qualified to be president.
“It’s Ted Cruz. Rather than fight it and do something negative, he came back and found something positive and humorous”, another added.
‘Today nearly every Republican candidate is attacking me.
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, appearing on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos”, went after Cruz not on his eligibility to run but on the issues.
“The Internet has all sorts of fevered swamp theories, but the facts are simple”, said Cruz.
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Cruz has brushed off calls to seek a court judgment on the issue. Maybe I’d like that better, I don’t know.
