Trump promotes false birth conspiracy about Nikki Haley

Former President Donald J. Trump has reclaimed his brand of nativism by accusing a political opponent of color – this time Nikki Haley – of not being a real American eligible to run for president, while dismissing his own eligibility for the vote among the defends the constitution.

Up social media site on Tuesday, Mr Trump reposted a report from The Gateway Pundit, a website influential in the pro-Trump community that traffics in a variety of conspiracy theories, casting doubt on Ms Haley’s US citizenship as polls show she takes Mr Trump’s lead. in New Hampshire. The report falsely claims that because Ms. Haley’s Indian immigrant parents were not yet citizens when she was born in South Carolina, she is disqualified “from presidential or vice-presidential candidacy under the 12th Amendment.”

Ms. Haley was born in the United States in 1972. Everyone born in the United States is a citizen.

Mr. Trump has done this before. His political rise was fueled by his false and racist claim that Barack Obama, then president, was born in Kenya and therefore ineligible for the White House. In 2016, he charged that his biggest rival that election year, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, was ineligible to vote because he was born in Canada to an American mother.

But this time there’s an added twist: Mr. Trump is fighting legal efforts in a number of states to make him ineligible to vote under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, cases that have so far succeeded in Colorado and Maine .

The constitution determines very few standards for presidential candidates, they must be at least 35 years old, a “natural-born” citizen, and a resident of the United States for 14 years. Section Three of the 14th Amendment, passed after the Civil War, added that anyone engaged in or aiding an “insurrection” against the United States was ineligible for “any office, civil or military.”

Mr. Trump has previously called for an end to “birthright citizenship,” which is granted to anyone born on U.S. soil.

The question of whether Mr. Trump qualifies for the insurrection clause is now before the Supreme Court.