Donald Trump Ramps Up Attacks on Ted Cruzâ€™s Eligibility

OTTUMWA, Iowa â€” Donald J. Trump sharply escalated his rhetoric about Senator Ted Cruzâ€™s eligibility to be president on Saturday, suggesting that because he was born in Canada there were unanswered questions about whether he met the constitutional requirement to be a â€œnatural-born citizen.â€™â€™

â€œYou canâ€™t have a person whoâ€™s running for office, even though Ted is very glib and he goes out and says â€˜Well, Iâ€™m a natural-born citizen,â€™ but the point is youâ€™re not,â€ Mr. Trump said while campaigning in Clear Lake, Iowa.

Mr. Cruz was born in Calgary, Canada, to an American mother, which automatically conferred American citizenship. Most legal experts agree that satisfies the requirement to be a â€œnatural-born citizen,â€™â€™ a term that was not defined by the founders.

Mr. Trump, who began raising questions about Mr. Cruzâ€™s ability to be president earlier in the week, said on Saturday that Mr. Cruz would have to go to court to get a â€œdeclaratory judgmentâ€ about his eligibility â€œor you have a candidate who just cannot run.â€™â€™ (Mr. Cruz could need a judgment if someone filed a lawsuit to challenge his candidacy and a court agreed to take up the question.)

With polls showing the race in Iowa tightening, and Mr. Cruz leading Mr. Trump by 4 percentage points in a Fox News poll released on Friday, Mr. Trump has returned to an issue that first gained him notoriety years ago when he challenged President Obamaâ€™s citizenship.

On Saturday night, before the final stop on a six-day bus tour of Iowa, Mr. Cruz said: â€œUnder longstanding federal law, the child of a U.S. citizen born abroad is a natural-born citizen.â€

I don't like this tactic Trump is using against Cruz AT ALL.

In September Trump said he had no "concerns" (as in "troll") , about Cruz's elgibility. Cruz begins to challenge him for the lead in Iowa polls and now he's "oh so concerned" .

But have to agree that probably the dems will attack Cruz over this big nothingburger.

They (dems) attack-It's what they do. Cruz is a top flight lawyer. He will be able to handle any legal BS they throw at him.

I hope everyone knows they (dems) will be coming after Trump with whatever they can find, distort , or outright lie about, too.

So I guess, instead of supporting a rock solid conservative who is well versed in the Constitution- We need to be fearful, and focus on what attacks the democrats are likely to launch against a candidate, make our choice based on that. So we should vote for whoever the dems like best- Riiight...

I’d take all this a lot more seriously if it weren’t such a transparent effort to discredit the man who will give us the best chance we have to restore the rule of law in this nation.

Sorry, but please don’t ask me to replace a narcissistic egomaniacal self-absorbed power-mad statist with another narcissistic egomaniacal self-absorbed power-mad statist and try to sell this to me as some sort of change. It’s not. It’s more of the same. It’s the “new boss same as the old boss”.

We Americans don’t need a boss. We need a faithful servant.

If SCOTUS won’t take it then a lower court’s ruling would stand - whatever that would be. That’s how the process works. Why are people upset if Trump wants a legal answer to an issue about which there is obviously divided opinion in the voting public?

If Trump sued Cruz and Cruz’s (partial) defense was that Obama as a foreign-born POTUS set a precedent, then at least Kagan should recuse herself if it ever came before POTUS, because she was the Solicitor General when Obama eligibility suits were first brought forward. She didn’t recuse herself in the past when she should have, but I think Trump could make a stink that could make her awfully uncomfortable if she didn’t recuse herself.

And I think he would do that because it would fit his claim that the voting public needs a decision that’s not corrupt and doesn’t leave the public with the same questions they started out with.

Cruz, too, would want Kagan to recuse herself because she is a political hack who would easily sell the country and Constitution short for the sake of her political cronies.

And if, by the time the case is heard, Trump was leading he might want Cruz legally cleared to be his VP. Or if Cruz is leading, Trump may want him cleared so Trump could be his VP (probably not, though) or (more likely) they could keep Jeb or another RINO from winning.

Both guys, though, would be more likely to consider doing this if they knew that their supporters are adult and patriotic enough to realize the need for a legally-binding answer as the system is supposed to work. Does any of us really want Congress deciding who can be POTUS? They’d put known Syrian illegal refugees who’ve sworn allegiance to ISIS in the White House. (And if you don’t believe that just consider what they’ve enabled Obama to do). The Constitution gives the JUDICIARY the job of interpreting the Constitution and deciding cases both as to fact and to interpretation. Congress, by contrast, is given the job of counting the votes and checking to make sure that the electoral votes are properly certified. They are given the right to determine eligibility of their own members but never given either the right or the responsibility to interpret or rule on Constitutional issues such as Presidential eligibility.

Part of the whole point of both Cruz and Trump is that the people within the system are so corrupt that America isn’t really even America any more.

Yes, the courts suck. And I believe they may have been threatened also, with Obama’s suits. But I think Trump knows what happened, and so far the things he’s done have preempted the same old war plans that our enemies have used. He’s dodging their traps because he knows their game plan. Same thing with Cruz. Now if their supporters will recognize what’s going on and refuse to swallow our enemies’ bait, those 2 can get this done, together.

Some of us were saying years ago that the democrat plan could be to wait until we’ve got a candidate and then use the courts to disqualify him somehow, making their candidate a shoe-in.

The more I think about this, the more I think Trump needs to realize that the way to stop that from happening if it looks like Cruz could be the R nominee is by making sure it is settled during the PRIMARY. That’s what Trump is saying. I don’t think Cruz can get a declaration from a judge; it has to be a decision, and that can only happen if there’s been an actual case. And the only way for there to be a case during the PRIMARY (before it’s too late to make sure there is an eligible candidate against Hillary) is if he files a lawsuit.

Things are being set up for this to happen, I think. And if all the R’s would realize the importance of getting it ironed out during the PRIMARY, they would be thanking Trump for this. Because a really good chance for having a POTUS who will buck the corrupt status quo in DC would be out the door and Hillary would be a shoe-in if this isn’t dealt with during the PRIMARY.

Please, people, think it through. We know the issue isn’t going to just go away even if Trump drops this, because Grayson says he will file suit if Cruz is the nominee. Cruz supporters (and I am one) need to realize that if this isn’t dealt with at the PRIMARY level, Hillary could be handed the White House by the black robes. NONE of us wants that.

Except maybe the bottom feeders in Congress who don’t want an interruption to the status quo...

Do the people at FR really want to side with the GOPe? If so, why?

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