Let’s be totally clear: Ted Cruz is legally eligible to become president. I don’t like it, you don’t like it, nobody who’s met him likes it. But it’s a fact.
And if there’s one thing Donald Trump hates, it’s facts. Who knows why he’s decided that this particular truth needs to be attacked, but he’s suddenly going on the offensive against Cruz’s citizenship, and it makes about as much sense as anything else he does.
True to form, Trump’s rhetoric is as slippery as one of his cheap neckties. He never actually says Cruz is ineligible to run—oh no, he’s far sneakier.
“It’s a problem for him,” Trump weaseled on MSNBC. “Let’s assume he got a nomination and the Democrats bring suit, the suit takes two to three years to solve, so how do you run?”
This is a made-up problem. Much as I hate to admit it, there’s a chance we could be stuck with a Cruz candidate. True, he was born in Canada. But his mother was an American citizen at the time, and even though the Constitution doesn’t explicitly spell out what qualifies someone as a “natural born citizen,” there’s universal consensus among non-crazy lawyers that Cruz’s parentage makes him one of us. God dammit.
The same question has been dredged up against John McCain (Panama) and Mitt Romney (Mexico) and Barry Goldwater (Arizona before it was a state), and it never goes anywhere.
So what’s Trump up to? He’s probably upset that Cruz is steadily climbing in popularity—he’s risen to around 20 percent, compared to Trump’s two-week-long flatlining around 35 percent. He might also be concerned about Cruz’s 12 endorsements from various Congressional representatives—a better predictor of electoral success than voter opinion. Trump, of course, has a few endorsements, but none that will help him win an election. (Unless you find your opinion swayed by the recommendations of Jeff Lord, former White House associate political director for the Reagan administration.)
It’s kind of a horrible pleasure to see Trump doing what he’s best at: sowing confusion, like in that Dr. Who scene where he says, “Don’t you think she looks tired?”
Trump’s version of that is encouraging Cruz to file a preemptive lawsuit to prove his own eligibility, which would of course be a terrible idea—pouring gasoline on top of a controversy that’s almost smoldered down to nothing.
“I like Ted a lot. I’d love to see him get it straightened out,” Trump said. What a stinker.
