BACK-TO-BACK FOX NEWS SHOWS AIR THE QUESTION
by Sharon Rondeau
(Jan. 6, 2016) — On Wednesday, Fox News’s “The Five” aired a segment about the question asked of presidential candidate Donald Trump by The Washington Post as to whether or not he believes Sen. Ted Cruz, also a presidential candidate, is constitutionally eligible for the position.
Trump had responded that perhaps Cruz should “do something pre-emptively” by asking a court to examine his credentials and issue a ruling on whether or not Cruz meets the definition of “natural born Citizen,” a unique requirement for the president placed in Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution by the Framers in 1787.
Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada on December 22, 1970, reportedly to a U.S.-citizen mother and Cuban-citizen father. Rafael Bienvenido Cruz later became a Canadian citizen while he and his wife worked in the oil industry there; in 2005, the elder Cruz reportedly became a U.S. citizen.
The younger Cruz moved with his parents to Texas when he was four years of age.
During the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, doubts about Barack Hussein Obama’s eligibility based on no proof that he was born in the U.S. and his claim of a foreign-citizen father were ridiculed and those expressing them termed “racist.”
Following “The Five,” “Special Report” with anchor Bret Baier also featured a segment on “natural born Citizen” wherein Baier displayed and read the pertinent constitutional clause. Baier said that legal analysts have determined, as Cruz has insisted both before and after Trump’s latest comments, that because he was born to one U.S. citizen, he is a “natural born U.S. Citizen.”
Reporting on a number of Republican townhall meetings taking place in New Hampshire currently was Fox’s Carl Cameron, who once said that Cruz was not eligible for the presidency because of his birth outside of the U.S.
Baier did not cite the legal experts he had consulted, nor did he appear to have referenced historical texts, including the Congressional Globe, wherein Rep. John Bingham defined a “natural born Citizen” as one who is born in the U.S. to citizen parents.
Baier said that the U.S. Supreme Court “has never ruled” on the definition of “natural born Citizen,” but several cases have tangentially mentioned “citizenship” and “natural born citizens,” with one of the best-known being Minor v. Happersett.
Questions have also been raised as to Sen. Marco Rubio’s eligibility as one born in the U.S. to non-citizen parents. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who suspended his campaign in November, has a similar background, having been born in Louisiana to two university students possessing green cards.
Of those who have been researching the topic of “natural born Citizen” over the last eight years or more, many have concluded that Founding Father John Jay, who became the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court under President George Washington, intended to preclude anyone with foreign allegiance from occupying the office of the chief executive when he wrote Washington during the Constitutional Convention:
Permit me to hint, whether it would not be wise & seasonable to provide a strong check to the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government; and to declare expresly that the Command in chief of the american army shall not be given to, nor devolve on, any but a natural born Citizen.
Baier also mentioned that Trump had questioned Obama’s “birth certificate,” presumably referring to early 2011, when Trump was considering challenging Obama for the presidency and publicly pressured Obama to release his “long-form” birth certificate.
On April 27, 2011, the White House released what it said was a certified copy of Obama’s original birth certificate from Hawaii, but the image was immediately declared a forgery by several analysts.
In March 2012, a criminal investigation declared the long-form birth certificate image and Obama’s Selective Service registration form “computer-generated forgeries.”
The media has avoided covering the conclusions and has ridiculed the messengers, Maricopa County Cold Case Posse lead investigator Mike Zullo and Maricopa County Sheriff Joseph M. Arpaio, who commissioned the probe.