Washington – Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has waded back into the topic of eligibility for the U.S. presidency, telling the Washington Post that rival Ted Cruz could run into trouble if he won the party’s nomination because he was born in Canada.
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Trump, the real-estate billionaire, had previously demanded that President Barack Obama prove he was born in the United States. He appeared to re-enter that “birther” arena with his latest comments, which were published on Tuesday.
Trump dominated the Republican pack in a recent Reuters/Ipsos national poll, but Cruz leads the field in Iowa, the first state to hold its presidential nominating contest next month ahead of the November 2016 election.
Trump told the Post he was not attacking Cruz, simply repeating chatter he had heard about Cruz’s birthplace. But he said it could cause problems, including potential court challenges.
“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 was quoted as saying in an interview with the Post. “You don’t want to be running and have that kind of thing over your head.”
Presidents must be “natural-born citizens” under the U.S. Constitution. Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, but his mother was a U.S. citizen, which he says meets the requirements to run.
Previous presidential candidates, such as Republican U.S. Senator John McCain, who were born outside the United States to parents who were citizens, were also considered eligible. McCain was born in the then U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone.
Cruz dismissed the comments on Tuesday with a lighthearted tweet implying Trump’s remarks were far-fetched.
He linked to a video of the “jumping the shark” scene from a 1977 episode of the television show “Happy Days” in which the character Fonzie jumps over a shark while on water skis. The phrase has come to indicate when a fading TV show does something outrageous or silly to grab attention.
Cruz has avoided engaging with Trump’s critiques so far. Trump has questioned how Cruz’s evangelical Christian faith fits with his Cuban heritage and criticized his opposition to ethanol subsidies.
Trump also raised questions about Cruz’s birthplace early in 2015, but later backed down and said he thought the senator was eligible to run.
Why would that be a problem? He is White.
Finally Trump has said something that makes sense. How do we know that? Because of all those “liberalism is a disease” types who have spent the last eight years saying Obama couldn’t be President since he was born in Kenya. Perhaps conservatives think Canada is part of the USA while Hawaii is part of Kenya
LET’S GO CRUZ !!!!!!!!!!!!!! and RUBIO !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dump Trump !!!!!!!!!
Great. We’re down to arguing over nonesense. Great way to choose a leader of the only super power. See who can insult more people and sound the most like an obnoxious boorish frat house bully.
Way to go, GOP. You put Obama in the White House by running Sarah Palin for BP and turning that race into a nationally embarrassing late night skit and now you’ll give us another eight years of Hillary and Bill Clinton in the White House.
Go ahead, GOP of 2016, bet you money and votes on one of the front running clowns and go home wondering why no one took you seriously.
This isn’t the GOP of Ronald Reagan or Richard Nixon. It has become the GOP of the Koch Brothers sponsoring the Ringling Brothers.
If the GOP were to a 2016 candidate instead of nominating one, the lat line of the help wanted ad would read: Candidates with ideas, experience and temperament for the job of POTUS need not apply.
Hey if it wasn’t a problem for Obama I don’t think it would be a problem for Cruz.