Donald Trump used his giant megaphone to push questions about whether the Canadian-born Ted Cruz is eligible for the presidency into the headlines, but now he’s being all modest about it.
In a phone interview on MSNBC’s “Live With Thomas Roberts,” Trump said the controversy “wasn't drummed up by me. It was drummed up by The Washington Post. There are many lawyers that say he can’t run for president.”
Trump’s not wrong that some lawyers and legal scholars have said that it’s an unsettled issue whether the Constitution’s requirement that the president be a “natural born citizen” excludes people born abroad to American parents, with constitutional law professor Mary Brigid McManamon arguing in the Washington Post that the language was intended to exclude people like Cruz. But Mary Brigid McManamon would not be getting this much attention on her own. The attention to the issue comes mostly from Trump having run his mouth, calling the question “a very precarious one for Republicans.” That he’s now trying to paint himself as an innocent asker of questions has to go on the (long, long) list of Trump’s most eye roll-worthy moments from this campaign.