President Trump amplified a false claim Thursday that California-born Kamala Harris might be ineligible to serve as vice president, a smear that recalls the racist "birther" campaign he waged against former President Obama.
It marked a new turn in Trump's scattershot response to Democratic rival Joe Biden's selection of Harris as his running mate. Trump and his allies have careened through a jumble of contradictory attacks on the California senator's ideology, demeanor and background, using well-worn sexist and racist tropes. Harris is the first Black woman and first Asian American on a major-party ticket.
In questioning Harris' American citizenship, Trump is returning to what fueled his rise in Republican politics — his insistence that Obama, the nation's first Black president, was born in Kenya instead of Hawaii.
"This is only the second time that that has happened in our nation’s history. And the first time was with President Barack Obama. So why is it that only the two Black candidates are questioned about the legitimacy of their citizenship?" said Valerie Jarrett, a former top Obama advisor.
The conspiracy theory about Harris' standing to be vice president began on Wednesday, when John C. Eastman, a law professor and failed Republican candidate for California attorney general in 2010, wrote a column in Newsweek stating that Harris may not meet the constitutional requirements for the vice presidency of being a "natural-born citizen." He questioned whether Harris' parents — her father is from Jamaica and her mother was from India — were naturalized citizens at the time that Harris was born in Oakland.
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