Ted Cruz on Wednesday said his eligibility to become president is “settled law” after Donald Trump warned Republicans that selecting the Canadian-born senator as the party’s presidential nominee could be a liability.
Advertisement
“People are anxious that is he weren’t born in this county-which he wasn’t-he was born in Canada” Trump told the Washington Post in an interview, raising the questions about Cruz’ qualification.
The Texas Senator is performing well in polling in the early voting state of Iowa.
Cruz was born to an American mother – and held dual citizenship. This last phrase has periodically spawned questions about presidential candidates who were born, or rumored to have been born, outside the United States. First, given Jay’s letter and the language of the 1790 naturalization act, it seems evident that the framers were anxious about foreign princes, not children born to American citizens living overseas. John McCain, Mitt Romney’s father George Romney and former Arizona Sen.
Colvin reported from Claremont, New Hampshire.
“I’d hate to see something like that get in his way”, Trump said.
Trump said he wasn’t using the “birther” charge against Cruz, with which he had once challenged President Obama, questioning whether or not Obama was born in Hawaii.
Trump made a habit of attacking his rivals, and Ted Cruz is no exception.
First, there are no questions about Cruz’s legal eligibility for the White House, and there is no legitimate controversy here. In a mid-December Iowa poll, Cruz lagged Trump by only 1 percent.
He added, “Trump saying, “I want to make America great again” is like Tom Credo saying, ‘We want our country back.'” Wilmer continued, “All of this stuff about Muslims and all of this stuff about Hispanics – it’s no longer coded language, it’s very clear for everyone to understand”.
The two Republicans’ attempts to damage Cruz reflect their campaigns’ understanding that their best bet at a long-shot run depends on a strong finish in Iowa – and that Cruz’s strength in Iowa makes that unlikely. That understanding of the constitutional phrase is consistent with the framers’ intent “to prevent someone who did not have a lifetime attachment to the United States from becoming president”, said University of San Diego law professor Michael Ramsey. “I’ve just learned that over the last few months”.
The comments mark a reversal for Trump, who in September downplayed Cruz’s birthplace in an interview with ABC.
Advertisement
Cruz’s take on the border comes a day after a dust-up between the Donald Trump campaign and the media over an ad he unveiled about border security, in which Trump used footage from the Moroccan border instead of the Mexican border, as the ad narration implied.
