Trump raises Cruz’s eligibility to run for president

Seven years later, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is dealing with pointed remarks from rival Donald Trump that Cruz’s birth in Canada to an American mother and Cuban father raises doubt about his eligibility to be president and could dog his campaign for the White House. He hasn’t yet raised it at a televised debate, in front of a crowd, or in an ad – any one of which would represent a yuge escalation.

The candidates with the biggest gains since our last poll in early December are Bush (up 5 points from 5% to 10%), Rubio (up 4 points from 11% to 15), and Kasich (up 3 points from 8% to 11%). “I don’t know, to be honest”, Trump said with some sympathy, noting that he likes Cruz “a lot”. “It’d be a very precarious one for Republicans because he’d be running and the courts may take a long time to make decision”. So, it’s certainly a concern, I guess, for the party, but I hope that’s not the case. Cruz said he tries to bring his two young daughters, Caroline and Catherine, on the trail with him as much as possible. The Texas senator has overtaken Trump in recent polls there. John McCain – who was born outside the US mainland in the Panama Canal Zone at a military base – was born in USA territory versus Cruz, who was born in Canada, saying “perhaps there is a distinction”.

“As a legal matter, the question is quite straightforward and settled law that the child of a USA citizen born overseas is a natural born citizen”, Cruz, a former solicitor general of Texas, told reporters while campaigning in Iowa. Indeed, because his father had also been resident in the United States, Senator Cruz would have been a “natural born Citizen” even under the Naturalization Act of 1790.

Cruz, in response to questions about Trump’s comments, said the best way to respond was to laugh it off and “move on to the issues that matter”. “You have people, in my opinion, that are voting many, many times“. Most legal scholars argue that a natural-born citizen is one who does not have to be naturalized to obtain citizenship, but rather, one who is a citizen by birth. Any citizen who is not a naturalized citizen – meaning they had to earn their citizenship – then they are a natural born citizen. Cruz wouldn’t say if he would seek such a stamp of approval. “Half of American voters say they’d be embarrassed to have Donald Trump as their Commander in Chief and most Americans think he doesn’t have a good chance in November, but there he is still at the top of the Republican heap”, Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said in a statement.

“We’re facing a megalomaniacal maniac who may potentially have a hydrogen bomb”, Cruz said.