On Thursday, Trump campaign legal adviser Jenna Ellis set out the bait to get the president to revive the most racist controversy of his political career.
Ellis decided to endorse the legal argument of Chapman University law professor John Eastman, who had resoundingly decided that the Calgary-born Ted Cruz was qualified for the presidency because his American parents rendered him a “natural-born citizen,” and declare that whether Oakland-born Kamala Harris was eligible for the vice presidency because of her formerly noncitizen parents was an “open question.”
It’s not, as both a century of Supreme Court precedent and an equally absurd case against the Miami-born Marco Rubio proved when a Broward Circuit judge tossed it out of court. But never one to encounter a dog whistle he could otherwise ignore, Trump decided to hone in the most racially charged argument he could find against Harris, not 48 hours after the campaign announced her as Joe Biden’s running mate.
As her epic flameout in the Democratic presidential primary proved, Harris is a paper tiger with few ideological convictions beyond her own pursuit of power and willingness to use it however she can to expand it. Her prosecutorial record is riddled with corruption against every subset, from sex workers and inmates to mothers and nonviolent drug offenders. Biden gifted the Trump campaign with a freight train full of baggage, and somehow, Trump has clung to a nothingburger that makes him look like an absolute moron at best and a flagrant racist at worst.
“I heard it today that she doesn’t meet the requirements,” Trump said in a Thursday press briefing regarding Harris’s eligibility under the Constitution, citing a “highly qualified, very talented lawyer.”
“I have no idea if that’s right,” he continued. “I would have assumed that the Democrats would have checked that out before she gets chosen to run for vice president.”
Trump is clearly referring either to Eastman, whose article went viral, or to Ellis, who has regular contact with the president.
Well, as it turns out, Biden’s team did ensure his eventual running mate would face zero credible legal challenges to her candidacy. It ruled out Tammy Duckworth, the biracial, war-hero senator who reportedly stunned Biden with her interview, because she was born overseas to only one American parent, not two, which could have been used in a partisan effort to kick her off the ticket.
So if there was even a seed of doubt in the minds of Biden’s legal advisers about Harris’s eligibility, it seems impossible that they would have chosen her.
After all, it’s legal consensus, grounded both in the 14th Amendment and a century of legal precedent, that any person born on American soil, especially those born to parents legally residing here, as Harris’s were, is automatically a citizen. Don’t take my word for it — just ask Lindsey Graham.
However, there is no issue as to whether or not she is an American citizen.
She was born in the United States in 1964 to parents who were legally present.
Under the Constitution and Supreme Court precedent, she is unequivocally an American citizen.
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) August 14, 2020
Harris provides plenty of ammunition for Trump to use to eviscerate her ticket. That he couldn’t wait two days to go for the single most below-the-belt attack, and one that will surely inflame the Democratic base the most, bodes horribly for those hoping he has an actual plan to win this election.
