Someone up thread spoke of natural born citizen, that which can be no other, was the common definition in college in the 70’s. I am here to say, in high school, in the 80’s, this was still the common definition. Many times simplified to be born here of two citizen parents.
You are right, people look for any little thing to try to obscure that which is clear as day. They say it is not spelled out in our constitution, like the constitution was meant to spell out every little thing. Got news for them, the constitution was not written so you could relinquish your common sense.
The best part is, most cannot explain why natural born is a distinction. If every citizen is natural born, why the distinction? No one can ever explain that, and that is because to explain that, is to explain why it exists.
Natural born citizens can be no other. It is one of the greatest protections left to us by the founders.
“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” is not defined in the Constitution either, but we all know what it means.
They wrote in clear language and chose their words carefully.
They did not use native born. (Harris, Rubio, Jindal, Haley, Obama, George P. Bush)
They did not use born a citizen. (possibly Cruz, but we need to see the paperwork, there must be paperwork for all overseas births)
They used natural born citizen and they knew exactly what they meant by it and expected everyone else to as well and it was in fact well understood until efforts were made to muddy the waters.