Trump Floats Ridiculous Nikki Haley Birther Conspiracy

Let’s say you were definitely born in the United States, but Donald Trump doesn’t like you. Are you really eligible to run for president? A lot of people are saying no!

Well, not really a lot of people. It’s mainly just Donald Trump and his allies at the Gateway Pundit. And while they did offer a justification for questioning whether Nikki Haley is eligible for the presidency, it’s totally absurd. Obviously, the only reason the GOP presidential candidate is suddenly being targeted with a birther conspiracy theory is because polls show she’s gaining on Trump in the New Hampshire GOP primary.

Earlier this week, Trump posted a screenshot of a Gateway Pundit post saying Haley isn’t qualified for the presidency under the 12th Amendment, as “her parents were not U.S. citizens at the time of her birth in 1972.”

This is clearly untrue. Nikki Haley was born in South Carolina in 1972, so she’s an American citizen eligible to run for president, end of story.

The Truth Social post doesn’t include a link, probably because facts aren’t the point here. The Gateway Pundit article claims that “legal scholar” Paul Ingrassia — whose identifies himself online as a 2022 graduate of Cornell Law School and a member of Trump’s National Economic Council — has “reignited the fiery debate over what it means to be a ‘natural born citizen’” with an article in the fringe, far-right online publication American Greatness.

But there is no “fiery debate.” The Constitution says “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.” While the meaning of the term “natural born citizen” isn’t totally clear, it’s widely understood to include, at the very least, people born in the United States. While Trump and other Republican politicians have said they want to end birthright citizenship, they are a long way from actually doing it.

So the fact that Haley’s parents, who are Indian immigrants, were not citizens at the time of her birth is irrelevant, as the Associated Press reported:

But experts agree Haley is a legitimate candidate as defined by the Constitution, regardless of her parents’ citizenship status. Her birth in Bamberg makes her a natural-born citizen, one of three qualifications to hold the U.S. presidency.

“Having been born in South Carolina, she is clearly a ‘natural born citizen,’ without regard to the fact that her parents were immigrants,” Geoffrey Stone, a professor of Law at the University of Chicago who is an expert on constitutional law, told The Associated Press.

Stone called claims otherwise “bonkers” and said that there are no legitimate arguments that would disqualify Haley from the presidency based on her parents’ citizenship.

The real point of Trump’s post was to smear Haley with his favorite racist conspiracy theory. Questioning Barack Obama’s citizenship helped launch Trump’s political career, so he later ran the same playbook against political opponents Ted Cruz and Kamala Harris. The only twist this time is that there actually is a debate raging about whether a candidate is ineligible for the presidency — and it’s Trump, not Haley.