And so it begins (again)...
When Ben Carson got a little to close to him in the polls, Donald Trump compared him to a child molester, and when Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) began to get close to him before the Iowa caucuses, Trump, the GOP leader in the presidential race, started suggesting that Cruz was not a natural born citizen. And, now that Marco Rubio seems to have picked up some momentum with a second place finish in South Carolina, Donald Trump has started to direct his ad hominem venom at the Florida senator.
It started with a tweet the morning of the S.C. primary:
The link is to a 12-minute video in which a woman makes the unusual claim that the 14th Amendment is not valid because it wasn't in the original text of the Constitution:
...an unidentified woman who is purported to be a litigation attorney describe what it means to be a natural born citizen. She argues that both Rubio and Cruz are citizens, but not "natural born citizens" according to the Constitution, which says only natural born citizens may become president.
Rubio was born in Miami. That makes him a natural born U.S. citizen under the Constitution. But the unnamed woman in the video Trump posted says he is not a "naturalized citizen," because his citizenship is defined under Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. If not for this "man-made law," she says Rubio would have been born a "resident alien," the same status of his parents, both of whom were Cuban nationals.
What makes this woman's argument ridiculous is that Article V of the Constitution does make provisions for amending the Constitution, and the 14th Amendment like all the other amendments enacted since the constitution became the law of the land in 1788 followed those Article V provisions to the letter.
But that didn't stop Donald Trump from perpetuating the falsehood on Sunday while being interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on ABC's This Week (video of conversation is below). Instead of disputing something obviously ridiculous (that the 14th Amendment isn't law), he took a neutral position when the host asked him if he believed the charge to be true.
I think the lawyers have to determine that that -- and not -- it was a retweet, not so much with Marco. I'm not really that familiar with Marco's circumstances --
And when asked why here retweeted it, Trump responded with:
(...) because I'm not sure. I mean, let people make their own determination. I know Ted is being now -- I think he's being sued by somebody having nothing to do with me, by the way.
Is being sued by somebody. Maybe it's in New York, having to do with eligibility
(...) I don't know. I really -- I've never looked at it [the issue of whether Rubio is eligible], George. I honestly have never looked at it. As somebody said, he's not. And I retweeted it. I have 14 million people between Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and I retweet things and we start dialogue and it's very interesting. And maybe that's why I have 14 million people.
Later in the show, when Marco Rubio was asked about the Trump statement, he responded:
Well, this is -- look, this is a pattern. This is a game he plays. He says something that's edgy and outrageous and then the media flocks and covers that and then no one else can get any coverage on anything else.
And that worked when there were 15 people running for president. It's not going to work anymore. I'm going to spend zero time on his interpretation of the Constitution with regards to eligibility.
Rubio is correct: rather than take responsibility for his actions, Mr. Trump practices plausible deniability. Whenever he gets major flack for an outlandish tweet, he says that all he did was retweet what someone else said. For example, Trump never actually called Fox's Megyn Kelly a "bimbo," he simply retweeted:
When asked about the above tweet, Trump insisted that he had not used the word himself. He told CNN
"That's a retweet. That's different. That's different," he said.
Doesn't it seem a bit strange that a man who promises to personally take responsibility for making America great again won't take responsibility for the messages he tweets out?