Here is the relevant wording from the Constitution.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; neither shall any person be eligible to that office who shall not have attained to the age of thirty five years, and been fourteen Years a resident within the United States.
Now please explain your reasoning that the above means there is no one eligible to be President.
The comma between "United States" and "at the time ..." makes the phrase "at the time of the adoption of this Constitution" applicable to natural born citizens as well as foreign born ones. So all the eligible citizens died long ago. ;^)
Don't believe it? Try this: "Smith, or Jones if he has red hair, can be President." Obviously, Jones needs red hair but Smith's can be any color, or missing. HOWEVER, "Smith, or Jones, if he has red hair..." means both need to be redheads.
I'm sure the Founders meant to say something else, but that's what they actually said.
I think you are interpreting that comma in the Constitution in accordance with today’s rules of punctuation, rather than those commonly understood in 1787 when it was written. The phrasing to which you refer has always been understood to have an entire “grandfather” clause, i. e., “a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of this Constitution,” to supplement the “natural born citizen” requirement which was intended to be the criterion applicable after all the citizens at the time of adoption had passed on.
Comma usage did not follow today’s rules. Just look at the superfluous ones in the Second Amendment.