It's hard to believe but the birthers are back. This time they're going after Senator Ted Cruz, who announced his candidacy for President of the United States Monday morning. Robbie George, a law professor at Princeton University, joined Glenn to dispel the theories before they could spread during an interview on TheBlaze TV.
Glenn: Professor Robbie George is a law professor at Princeton University, knew Senator Cruz from his time as a student there, and in fact is the guy who gave the grade for his thesis. Robbie George joins us now from Princeton. Hello, Professor George.
Prof. George: Hi, Glenn. How are you doing?
Glenn: Good, how are you?
Prof. George: Very well, thank you.
Glenn: So, I want to talk to you about a couple of things. Before we get into some personal stories about Ted Cruz, do me a favor and please put an end to this nonsense that Ted Cruz cannot run for president because he’s a Canadian.
Prof. George: Well, it’s just not true. He’s a natural born citizen. He’s never been a citizen of any other country. He was born an American citizen to an American mother, happened to be born in Canada, but the consensus of scholars is pretty strict on this. He’s perfectly entitled to run for president of the Constitution.
Glenn: Can you explain what John Jay was doing with that and why this doesn’t apply? Because honestly, even if Barack Obama were born in Kenya, and we all know that he was born in Hawaii or Newfoundland, even if he was born in Kenya, because his mother was a citizen, he still would have been eligible for President of the United States. Is that true?
Prof. George: Yeah, that’s right. I mean, assuming that there was nothing that she did that compromised her own citizenship, and we don’t know that there was anything she did like that. There’s certainly nothing that Ted Cruz’s mother did like that. Here’s the way to think about it, Glenn. I mean, he wasn’t a citizen of some other country, so he was not naturalized to be an American citizen.
Glenn Didn’t he just turn in his Canadian citizenship? Didn’t he have dual citizenship?
Prof. George: Yeah, it’s possible to have dual citizenship. The key thing though is that you were born an American citizen. You were born an American citizen. You didn’t get it later by naturalization. You were born into it.
Glenn: I mean, this is not just you saying this. This is Harvard Law Review. This is a very well—I’m seeing this everywhere on the Internet now.
Prof. George: Glenn, this is not an issue. I mean, people can talk, and the Internet can go crazy about it. We can have all kinds of conspiracy theories and things like that. All of it is going to be irrelevant. We might as well lay it aside. The man has announced he is running for president. If he is elected, he will be inaugurated on January—
Glenn: Right.
Prof. George: That’s the way it works. That’s what’s going to happen. I don’t think we need to waste our time, and you certainly don’t need to waste your time talking about this. Let the lunatics on the Internet continue to make an issue of it and just move on.
Glenn: I just wanted one more thing, this is not a new issue. I just love this book. It’s called The Great Mistake. It comes from the time of the Great Depression when Hoover was in office, and they were saying the same thing about Hoover. They’re saying he could not be president because he wasn’t an American citizen. He was English.
Prof. George: Right. Let me give you an example of somebody who can’t be president. Henry Kissinger cannot be president. Now, why can Henry Kissinger not be president? It’s because he was born a citizen of somewhere else, namely Germany. He was naturalized as an American citizen, so whatever achievements and whatever great public service former Secretary of State Kissinger is given and so forth, he is simply not eligible under the Constitution to be President of the United States. Perhaps that should be changed, but that’s the way it is.