Il Douchebag went birther on Cruz:
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.”
Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
Baud
Hahaha.
dmsilev
We should feel a bit sorry for Trump’s crack team of birth-certificate investigators. Last time round, they got a Hawaiian vacation out of the deal; this time it’s winter in Canada.
Seanly
Cue sad trombone…
At least Turmp is consistent?
schrodinger's cat
Ted Cruz has a face for radio and voice for the silent era.
the Conster
The interesting part of this is, no one ratfucks like Republicans, and the press holds Dems to a higher standard. If anyone is going to push this issue on Cruz, it’s Trump and not the Dem nominee.
Keith G
I love it, but I doubt that this will have legs. It does show that Donald knows that his path to the nomination lies over the battered and crispy (metaphoric) body of Ted Cruz.
RaflW
“I’d hate to see something like that get in his way.”
Did he say that with a Mafia Don accent? I’d be disappointed if he didn’t.
reality-based (the original, not the troll)
This was just covered on CNN, where nobody stated the obviou, to wit:
if a guy born on American soil to an American Mother and a Kenyan father is not a “natural-born” American –
as not only Trump, but half the Republican voters, claim to believe –
than how in hell can a guy born to an American mother and a Cuban father on CANADIAN soil be a “natural-born” American?
To support Ted Cruz, these idiots will have to now admit that they were completely wrong to attack Obama’s citizenship.
That’s a pretty high bar for the average GOP primary voter. Even their irony-free brains might notice a little cognitive dissonance on that one.
dmsilev
Also, spare a bit of schadenfreude for the fact that nobody regards !Jeb as being worth attacking.
jl
So, this is the full frontal Trump on attack?
What have we seen recently?
Attacks HRC on Syria in area where she has a very strong response (having been publicly much more aggressive than Obama from since long before she declared her candidacy)
Name checks Bill Clinton’s johnson to attach HRC on women’s rights issue.(asinine and tired)
Goes birther on Cruz (like anyone gives a rat’s ass about that).
So far I like it. Trump is a fabulous classy tremendous winner against the crummy GOP loser presidential contestants, and among his Trumpist goofballs.
Anywhere else he just might stink.
But, looks like Trump may fade against Cruz by the time the GOP powerball sweepstakes is over.
kc
Gotta admire the concern troll-y way Trump frames it.
cmorenc
@reality-based (the original, not the troll):
The GOP birthers’ can’t-resist rejoinder to that is that Obama was really born in Kenya, contrary to what the fabricated Hawaiian birth certificate purportedly says – and is therefore ineligible. Think what that implies about Cruz, who was really born in Canada….the only way out of that conundrum is to claim that Obama’s alleged US momma really wasn’t his real momma, who was also a black Kenyan….
Waldo
@Keith G: Yep. Cruz is probably smart enough not to take the bait this time, but Trump is not going to let up. Sh*t just got surreal.
NotMax
Marx had it right. Tragedy, then farce.
Hitching his wagon to an anvil.
goblue72
The Field Poll – the preeminent polling for California elections – has Cruz in the lead over Trump for the California GOP primary – 25% Cruz to 23% Trump. Rubio is polling a distant third at 13%.
Why does this matter – California is going to vote Blue in the general, you say? Dirty little secret – the big Blue states (New York, California, Illinois, etc) while irrelevant in the general, do play a factor in the GOP primary. Traditionally, its been the path to travel for more moderate GOP candidates to pick up delegates who don’t fare so well in the more wingnut states – guys like McCain and Romney. With the Big Blue states also serving to enable the GOP to nominate a candidate who plays better in the general election swing states. It gets a little tricky, as each state’s delegate count starts off with a baseline 5 delegates for each Senator (effectively, 10 per state) plus 3 delegates for each House seat (effectively, purely based on population) and then bonus delegates get awarded to each state based on how Republican that state is – (the more GOP House and Senate members it sends to Congress and the more GOP controlled its state is (via GOP Governorship or GOP control of one or both state legislatures) plus whether it voted GOP in the most recent Presidential general election.
Out of 2,472 delegates, California has 172 delegates, more than any other state. If I recall, the GOP has switched to winner take all in awarding delegates for 2016 – in order to avoid a long drawn out fight. Ha!
Most of the Big Blue states have not been polled recently for GOP primary. Last time Illinois was polled was in July – when Walker was still running and taking 23% of the vote in Illinois. Last time New York was polled was by Quinnipiac in June, with Pataki sharing the lead with Rubio.
There’s a lot of field left in which to run for several of the candidates.
Though I guess the scary thing is that in California, 48% of GOP voters want either Cruz or Trump to win. 9% of GOP voters in CA supported Carson – once that nut drops out, dollar to donuts his votes go to Cruz, or possibly Trump.
SiubhanDuinne
@RaflW:
“Nice little Presidential campaign you have here. Be a shame if anything was to happen to it.”
BillinGlendaleCA
@NotMax: What color is the sky in jeb?’s world?
BillinGlendaleCA
@goblue72: Doesn’t matter, the nomination will be effectively wrapped up by the time CA votes in June.
ETA: IIRC, the GOP gives more weight(delegate wise) to states that voted for the GOP in the past.
SiubhanDuinne
@Waldo:
jl
@goblue72:
Much of the CA GOP is just a crazy and goofball as in the rest of the USA.
Schlemazel
@reality-based (the original, not the troll):
Chuckles the Toddler assured me this is a moot issue since it could not be contested in court until Crud was President because the lack standing. Why is he not working on Halperns great American novel for TV mentioned in the last thread?
Keith G
@Waldo: Tapping into the world of racing, Cruz has been content to stay in Trump’s slipstream and enjoy the ride with minimal effort.
There will come a time, and it may be rather soon, for Ted to adopt a more aggressive (but still considerate, for a time) approach vis a vis Trump.
This will be interesting since that will be a big tell as to what the Cruz campaign is made of.
edit:
By the by, if you have not seen Cruz’s ad on immigration, please do. it is a thing of beauty
KG
@goblue72: California’s primary is in June, we are the last state to vote and thus are typically irrelevant when it comes to presidential nominations. If the GOP nomination comes down to California, shit’s gone way off the rails for the GOP
Mike J
@Schlemazel: It’s not about reality, it’s about scaring away potential voters. People who were stupid enough to think Obama ineligible may be stupid enough to buy it with Cruz.
goblue72
@BillinGlendaleCA: Good point. I had forgotten that the primary calendars have moved around so much over the last several cycles. Just checked, and California GOP primary used to be a lot earlier. (Feb/March back in 2000, 2004, 2008)
goblue72
@KG: Yeah I forgot how much its moved around – used to be in Feb/March.
Mike in NC
Was inevitable that Der Trump would question the pure whiteness of Cruz, Rubio, and JEB! (married to a Mexican, good heavens!). Rooting for injuries all around.
Mike J
@Keith G:
I keep trying to convince my opponents in the sailboat racing world to adapt this strategy, but so far none of them have fallen for it.
goblue72
@BillinGlendaleCA: As to your second part, yes – as I noted in my comment, the delegate allocation process is partially by population and partially based on what degree a state votes more for GOP.
Schlemazel
@Mike J:
But the Toddler tells me its moot!!!
I understand what Il Douche is trying to do but you have to admire the subtle ass-kissing Chuck does to his GOP masters. Ignore the real story to cover the irrelevant to create a diversion.
Aaron
To the orange and canadian menaces:
Yiff in hell fur fags, yiff in hell!
Seriously though: it’s clear that the words “natural born” modifies “American Citizen” in the Amendment.
And the contrast would be those who are “legally born” an American Citizen.
People who are born in the USA are natural born american citizens. People born outside the USA to an American Citizen are “legally born american citizen” because they get their citizenship by operation of law only. like ted cruz. or barack obama. if obama was actually born outside the US.
geg6
LOLOLOLOLOLOL!
Terrifying as the possibility of any of these clowns somehow managing to pull off a win in the general (which I just can’t see at this point), I’m thoroughly enjoying the shenanigans inside the clown car during the primary.
? Martin
@KG: The Dem race came down to that kind of difference in 2008. I could see it happening for the GOP particularly with nobody close to 50% yet. It’s totally unclear how the 60+% of non-Trump supporters might break.
Woodrowfan
@NotMax: The Eighteenth Brumaire of Jeb! Bush??
? Martin
@Mike J: Doesn’t work in most auto racing either. Mainly just NASCAR where downforce isn’t as important as fuel savings.
ThresherK
@schrodinger’s cat: That’s “a voice for telegraphy”; take it from a radio op.
BillinGlendaleCA
@? Martin: I think the post-March 15th winner take all rule makes that less likely.
schrodinger's cat
@ThresherK: I just made that up, telegraphy sounds better! Thanks!
Emma
Rooting for injuries in this corner!
Roger Moore
@reality-based (the original, not the troll):
No, they don’t; they just need to deny that Obama was born in the USA. The Republicans are allowed to have their own facts.
OGLiberal
@Aaron: And if legally born outside the U.S. Then Obama is still the same as Cruz because there is no way his mom was not his mom – he looks just like his maternal grandfather and nothing like his biological dad.
The other theory is that he’s actually the biological son of some black radical American commie, which would make him the spawn of a black allegedly American hating Red but a full blown American citizen….unless of course he was born to a commie American white girl and a commie American black guy…in Kenya…which I believe is another theory, which would make him just like John McCain but with a black dad…..
….and, of course, that’s really what it’s all about.
trollhattan
@Schlemazel:
Too bad he didn’t say it’s all mook.
Bobby Thomson
@cmorenc: @reality-based (the original, not the troll): Obama is situated differently from Cruz because his mother was younger and would not have satisfied the residency requirements to confer citizenship at birth – IF he were born outside the country. Since he was born in Hawaii, it’s a moo point. Cruz’ mother was old enough to satisfy the residency requirement and confer citizenship at birth.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Aaron: Not true. Babies born to American Citizen mothers are, babies born to American Citizen fathers are not. there are a whole bunch of different dates and rules involved. It was all to do with denying the children of US GIs serving abroad citizenship on all the babies they fathered. (see Vietnam and the Bui Doi)
NotMax
@KG
Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota also have scheduled primaries the same day as California’s. Not a state, but the D.C primary will occur a week after those.
Per here.
David Koch
Meanwhile lil’ Marco is embarrassed to be short.
Can U imagine the media mockery if a Democrat did this — it would never end.
Mike in NC
@srv: The American Sphincter? How low can you go?
piratedan7
well, they haven’t quite progressed to dancing around fire in their skivvies but we still have a long process to go thru yet, perhaps we may still yet get a scene where Megan Kelly comes out and reads a pigs entrails to tell us what to think….
NotMax
@schrodinger’s cat
Humbly suggest “a voice suited for mime.”
BillinGlendaleCA
@Bobby Thomson: Sure, like Hawaii is in the US; it’s exotic and all.
Mike J
@Bobby Thomson:
Like a cow’s opinion.
lamh36
Speaking of birth related stuff…kinda.
Ooh…yes…Finding Your Roots in back on PBS tonight. Tonight’s ep has NOLA native Donna Brazile. Gonna be interesting to see some NOLA history.
Bobby Thomson
@BillinGlendaleCA: True dat.
Bobby Thomson
@Mike J: It just doesn’t matter. It’s moo.
Mike J
@David Koch: Cuban boots, but he still doesn’t think there should be any diplomacy.
jl
@David Koch: If Rubio is supposed to be so all hep and mod and hip and young, to appeal to them damn kids these days, he should be showing those heels off. All he needs is some bangs. And tighter slacks.
Roger Moore
@Bobby Thomson:
Not quite. The residency requirement only applies if an American citizen is married to a non-citizen. There’s a strong legal case that Obama’s parents weren’t legally married, since Obama Sr. was not legally divorced from his first wife. The rule for unwed mothers is different and doesn’t have the same residency requirement. Our citizenship laws are a gigantic mess.
Iowa Old Lady
This is absolutely typical Trump phrasing. It’s his version of “everybody says so,” which he is making up as he goes because he apparently thinks it’s a strong argument.
PurpleGirl
@Mike in NC: Well, Trump’s first wife (Ivana) came from the Czech Republic, Marla (mistress and then wife #2) was American, but wife #3 (Melania) was born in Slovenia.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Iowa Old Lady: It’s been working for him so far, why stop now.
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat: Cruz seems like a Disney villain to me. Cruzella de Ville.
BillinGlendaleCA
@PurpleGirl:
But remember, Bill Clinton is worse cause a BJ.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Iowa Old Lady: When he got all worked up about Megan Kelly and said she had “blood coming out of her eyes”, he later said “which is a very common expression”. Said the same thing about “schlonged, IIRC.
? Martin
@BillinGlendaleCA: I don’t see how. If Trump pulls out a small lead early due to proportional delegates and then his competition dries up by Super Tuesday, rather than those delegates being split among a dozen candidates, they’ll start flowing to one.
The winner-take-all was designed to get a candidate with a bare majority up to a dominant position. In a normal year, that’s what you’d find, but Trump isn’t a bare majority – he’s at 40%. If candidates drop out and none of their supporters go to Trump, now you have a scenario where the early leader may not win any late delegates, and a Cruz or even a Bush could quickly come from behind.
This is the danger of such a large field with nobody gaining majority support. And because Trump is so polarizing a candidate, I’m far from confident that he’d pick up enough from that other 60% to allow him to win states, particularly as we get into head-head polling for the general and an electorate that pays increasing attention the closer to vote time we get.
JPL
@Baud: OMG.. Cruzella de Ville… I love that and I’m gonna steal it.
David Koch
Chris Hayes is wringing his hands, worried that Obama’s gun measure will hurt Sanders, driving away his base of hard working whites who love their guns.
I tell ya, if Sanders advised his cult to drink Drano, Hayes would be the first one in line.
Schlemazel
@trollhattan:
I was surprised he didn’t pronounce it “mute”
Ella in New Mexico
@Aaron: IIRC, the Naturalization Act of 1790 clarified that children born abroad to U.S. citizens were, too, natural born citizens.
So, unless you or anyone else can unravel Teddy’s Mom’s natural-born citizenship qualification, this is a nothin burger.
But, given that we have Trump on tape just a few months ago saying that he believes Cruz’s citizenship is solid, Trump is clearly demonstrating, once again, that he has absolutely no qualms about being even the LEAST bit consistent about what he says. Or truthful. Or accurate.
After reading the kinds of horrible, mean-spirited and vile things he has said and done to his own brother, his brother’s son’s disabled child, and his ex-wives in divorce depositions, I really wonder if Trump’s supporters are going to realize he’s not just a guy “who tells it like it is”. He’s a guy who has absolutely NO loyalty to anyone or thing that gets in his way in the least bit. How can anyone trust his word when he violates so many promises, relationships and even frigging legal contracts?
He’s beyond a sociopath. Is there even a term to describe his total lack of character?
PurpleGirl
@BillinGlendaleCA: I seem to remember a newspaper headline (Daily News? the Post?) wherein Marla Maples proclaimed Trump to be the the best sex she’d ever had. (Just how much sex had she had????)
BillinGlendaleCA
@? Martin:
That’s a pretty big assumption. If any candidate wins the majority of the proportional primaries, he’ll win. Momentum isn’t just for football anymore.
mclaren
If it’s well documented that Ted Cruz was born in Canada, then there’s nothing “birther” about Trump pointing this out. The constitution of the united states specifies that the president has to be a natural born U.S. citizen. If Cruz was born in Canada and there exists documents conclusively proving that he was born in Canada, then there are real doubts that Cruz is eligible to become president. Nothing “birther” in any way, shape or form about stating that.
“Birther” is a term used by cranks who cast doubt on whether Barry Sotero AKA Barack Obama was born in Hawai’i. The documents exist proving conclusively that Obama was born in Hawai’i. That’s a fact. Full stop. End of discussion. Crackpots who keep on spewing bullshit about how we allegedly “don’t know where Obama was born” or “he won’t release all the documents” are birthers. They’re kooks making up bullshit and denying documented facts.
Someone who points out that Ted Cruz was born in Canada is not a kook making up bullshit and denying documented facts. That person is making a salient point. If Ted Cruz actually was born in Canada, he may not be eligible to be president any more than Arnold Schwarzenegger is eligible to be president.
This is not my opinion. This is not some prejudice or fantasy I came up with. It’s right there is Article 1 of section 2 of the constitution:
Cruz’s mom was American and his father was Cuban. His dad was working in the oil industry in Canada when Cruz was born. One legal scholar has claimed “”It would be reasonable to interpret the Constitution’s natural born citizenship provision to include children born abroad to U.S. citizens, including Senator Cruz, for a number of reasons.”
Maybe. But only parent a U.S. citizen? And Cruz born in another country? That’s pushing it. There’s a real question as to whether Cruz is eligible. The Supreme Court has never ruled on that specific issue. It’s an open legal question.
Schlemazel
@Bobby Thomson:
Seriously? How old does a person born in the US of natural born American citizens have to be before they are American citizens? Is that in one of the constitutions Bozo Haram waves around like a holy relic?
Patricia Kayden
I don’t recall President Obama spending any time in court re the silly birther issue. What makes Trump think Cruz would be any different?
WereBear
Is Cruz eligible?
Princess
Ted Cruz’s citizenship problem is real. There is a definite ambiguity in his case, much more so than with Obama or McCain. My kid was born in Canada to a US parent and a Canadian parent, and I always told kid he could never become president because I was sure that was the case.
David Koch
Cruz’s biggest problem is his name isn’t “Ted” – it’s “Rafael”
You think low information people are going to vote for someone named Rafael Cruz who wasn’t even born in the US?
Roger Moore
@Schlemazel:
The law at the time Obama was born said that a child born outside the US to married parents, one citizen and one alien (not citizen and not national), would only be born a citizen if the citizen parent had been a resident of the US for at least 5 years after their 14th birthday*. The idea was to require the parent to have a substantial connection to the USA, so there wouldn’t be generations of citizens who had never actually lived here for a substantial time. Since Obama’s mom was still 18 when he was born, she hadn’t lived in the US for at least 5 years after her 14th birthday, she wouldn’t have qualified, so theoretically Obama wouldn’t have been born a citizen if he had been born in Kenya. Except that his parents probably weren’t legally married (his father was not properly divorced from his first wife), so a different set of rules without the residency requirement would have applied.
*With an exception that counted time overseas while a government employee or as the child of a government employee as living in the US.
Patricia Kayden
@reality-based (the original, not the troll): You’re forgetting the key difference between Cruz and Obama. Obama is blah, in the infamous words of Santorum.
Roger Moore
@Patricia Kayden:
We’ve seen Cruz’s real birth certificate, and it says he was born in Canada.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike J:
Wait, wait, where did those come from? There’s still an embargo in place, you know.
The Lodger
@Princess: Well, you’d probably have to renounce your title.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
It’s the first one that got me to look to see if this guy writes for the Onion. I think the Toronto Star is a legit newspaper.
I think he believes half that last one. I’m sure the man despises his own supporters.
Mike J
@SiubhanDuinne: Vanity Fair is on the trail of this story.
Princess
@The Lodger: Damn.
Amusingly enough, the only one to marry someone born in a Communist country was Trump.
Gvg
@mclaren: no. You are making assumptions about what natural born means in the constitution that seem reasonable to you but I made different ones that seemed obvious to me and lots of others turn out to make other assumptions. It had to be clarified by further laws as the US went along in time and checked by the Supreams. The law has actually been changed a few times which is apparently a pint for a subset of Birchers who argue something or other about how old Obama’s mother was when she traveled and came back to the us. Anyway, it doesn’t matter about Cruz being born in Canada. He has been a US citizen since birth. Apparently there was some argument if he was still a dual citizen but he gave up Canadian citizenship several years ago to forestall that argument.
The thing that always boggled me about the Birthers was if there was a early conspericy to make kid Obama president the obvious thing to do was make sure he was born here not have his mom travel while pregnant out of the country for no purpose. All of their significant ideas are so dumb. You can’t decide some baby is going to grow up to be president. The president can’t magically make us change our religions or body of law. He can’t decide to stay president and have it stick. He can’t make our armed forces into Muslim law enforcers etc.
Mnemosyne
@Schlemazel:
The way the law used to be written, it would be a situation where Person A had a child and promptly moved overseas with that infant. If Child A then had a child (Child B) of their own while a resident of a foreign country, Child B could not claim US citizenship because Child A had not lived in the US. The law is different now.
So the “birther” claim is that IF Obama’s mother had traveled to Kenya and IF she had the baby while she was there, he wouldn’t be a citizen. Frankly, Obama still wouldn’t be denied citizenship even in that scenario because his mother would need to be a resident of the foreign country, not just a visitor, but that’s the minuscule scrap they hang their theory on — a secret, completely undocumented visit to Kenya by a very pregnant Ann Dunham that was then covered up.
And, believe it or not, I suspect it gets even stupider. I think that the guy who originally promulgated this theory based on a “slip” by one of Obama’s father’s relatives forgot that the president is Barack Obama JR. He and his father share the same name. So saying that “Barack was born in Kenya” isn’t quite the revealing mistake he seems to have thought since there are two men with the same name and one of them was unquestionably born in Kenya.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
I think the weird gray area is whether or not the mother was an actual *resident* of the foreign country when she gave birth. If she was just there on a visit and went into labor unexpectedly, it would be very strange for the courts to decide that the baby did not receive citizenship just because she was under 25 (math may need to be checked).
Bobby Thomson
@Schlemazel: it’s not that his mother wasn’t a citizen. It’s that she wasn’t old enough to confer automatic citizenship to her childrent by a foreign spouse.
David Koch
@Mike J:
That’s a pretty good sale – 60% off and you can use it for another four months up in the north.
Omnes Omnibus
@David Koch: Some people keep sweaters for more than one year.
dogwood
All this and I’m still not clear if all the scholars here can assure my grandson he can grow up to be president. Oh, well. I guess I’ll wait until Orly Taitz weighs in.
Omnes Omnibus
@dogwood: Your grandson has no chance. His family’s association with this blog will doom him. Sorry.
jl
@Omnes Omnibus: That probably explains the Baud campaign’s negative territory polling results.
Schlemazel
@Bobby Thomson: didn’t read my question or did I not type clearly?
Just Some Fuckhead
@mclaren: At the very most, Ted Cruz is only half an American. No reasonable constitutional scholar would conclude half an American is eligible to be POTUS.
reality-based (the original, not the troll)
@Bobby Thomson: Huh? ‘
I had no idea the actual LAW was so complicated! I knew the troglodytes had extremely complicated THEORIES to try to overcome the simple fact that the blah guy was born in Hawaii -including mysterious non-existent trips to Kenya by his mother and a whole Cabal of Hawaiians who were In On The Plot way back when – including the Honolulu newspaper –
but lordy, lordy! There must be an entire dank corner of the Interwebs devoted to theories of just how They Dun It!
wuzzat
@David Koch: I think the official GOP name for those are “Fuck you pumps.”
The Lodger
@Just Some Fuckhead: Does that mean he can’t become President until he turns 70?
Capri
@Ella in New Mexico: Yes, it’s called being a malignant narcissist. He’s textbook.
Alan Grayson has said that he is planning a lawsuit if Cruz gets the GOP nomination. He can’t be the only one keeping his powder dry until the time it’s needed.
Joe Miller
@srv: Tyranny? Two of my areas of academic specialty were the histories of Stalin’s Russia and Nazi Germany. You, The American Spectator, and the typical whining right-wing loudmouth wouldn’t know tyranny if it walked up and bit you on the ass.
NickM
Creamy and delicious
sdhays
@kc: My favorite part was this:
No, Ted Cruz never had a Canadian passport. But it’s an attack along the lines of “when did you stop hitting your wife”? Cruz has to explain that while he was born in Canada, this passport business just isn’t true. You can just see the wheels turning in the RWNJ’s heads: “But….if you were born in Canada, are you an American?”
Trump doesn’t need to convince anyone that Cruz is actually disqualified, just sow some delicious FUD and make Cruz stall. I love it!
Monala
@Ella in New Mexico: I hadn’t heard that story about Trump’s brother and nephew, so I Googled it. Found the New York Times story, “For Donald Trump, Lessons From a Brother’s Suffering” that slips the part about denying his disabled great-nephew medical care into a friggin’ panegyric. Trump learns from his alcoholic brother to avoid drugs and drink and to continually pursue success, and later in life, comes to appreciate his brother’s “free spirit.” Seriously, NYT? (But yeah, they also called Robert Dear a “gentle loner,” so what can we expect…)
Meanwhile, the brother’s story is so sad. He sounds like such a good guy, who didn’t want to be an a**hole like the rest of his family, and was so trashed for that by his dad that he turned to alcohol.
catclub
@sdhays: Cruz did not explicitly renounce his Canadian citizenship
until a few years ago, when he knew he would run for president. So he has only been a loyal (ie no divided loyalties) US citizen for a couple of years. I would bring it up if I were Trump.
Also ask: If you are such a loyal citizen, why did you keep Canadian citizenship until you were over 40 years old? You’re a Harvard trained lawyer and you just forgot?
dogwood
@Capri: Great, just when I’m feeling all sanctimoniously superior to the republican Neanderthals, someone has to bring up Alan Grayson.
rikyrah
@mclaren:
I thought that the Constitution was clear on this.
RAFAEL was BORN in CANADA
sdhays
@catclub: All true. But I never heard of him owning a Canadian passport. That’s a beautiful lie, because it encompasses all of the details you bring up without actually making that argument.
As far as I’m concerned, the Constitution should have a liberal interpretation of “natural born citizen” and forget all of this legal nonsense. Cruz couldn’t control where he was born, and I believe he has always considered himself American. But Republicans tend to get hung up on stupid things like “purity”, so I hope that this does give them some heartburn. And someone like Cruz, who was happy to wink and nudge to birthers slandering the President, completely deserves the scrutiny.
mclaren
@Gvg:
Has the supreme court weighed in since the law has been changed? I honestly don’t know. It seems to me there’s some ambiguity here.
@rikyrah:
As gvg points out, you’re making assumptions here about what “natural born” means. A person can very clearly be born in another country and be a U.S. citizen if both parents are U.S. citizens and e.g. the parents are on vacation. Or if both parents are U.S. citizens and the country in question is an American protectorate or one of those oddball regions nominally under U.S. control, like the Marshall Islands or Diego Garcia or Guantanamo Bay in Cuba or the Panama canal zone at the time it was U.S.-controlled.
But only one of Cruz’s parents was an American citizen and IIRC both of Cruz’s parents were residents in Canada. They were living there, not just visiting. That seems to me to make the issue more ambiguous.
But I could well be wrong.
Just Some Fuckhead
@mclaren: Just like two Dalmatian dogs cannot produce a dog that is half beagle, so two American citizens can not produce a half Canadian, only a full American. OTOH, if a beagle is born in Dalmatia, he is automatically a Dalmatian dog, by virtue of the fact that is where he hails from.
Byterun
@mclaren: i thought there was an issue with mccain being born in the canal zone
But your last paragraph, … Yeah.
Ryan
Does this mean we can keep PBO for an extra couple of years?
trnc
@cmorenc:
They didn’t care about logic, facts and consistency then, so I don’t think it will matter much to them now.
trnc
@Capri:
And that’s exactly the time everyone in the media will suddenly discover that having a mother with US citizenship is all that matters. Count on it.
Paul in KY
@Ella in New Mexico: Cheneyian?
Paul in KY
@reality-based (the original, not the troll): I wouldn’t go there, if I were you.
Ella in New Mexico
@Paul in KY:
Close…But even Darth Cheney has a set of principles he sticks to, as dark, dirty, and truly evil as they may be. Hey, if he’s anything he’s consistent. Which, too, is scary.
But weirdly, not as scary as I find someone so wildly popular as Trump who will literally say or do ANYTHING to get attention, then reverse himself like 15 seconds later and get the same support.
Paul in KY
@mclaren: I hope you are not (on this, anyway)
Paul in KY
@Ella in New Mexico: OK, see your point.
Ella in New Mexico
@Monala: Yes, that story was so sad. Just imagining the cold, lonely, heart breaking world of a kid who actually had a soul, trying to grow up in such a loveless family.
Donald thrived, his brother died. That speaks volumes.
Ella in New Mexico
@Paul in KY:
LOL
Really, has anyone gotten a picture of Trump’s feet when he’s not wearing shoes? I’m suspecting a cloven-like disorder…:-)