Has Trump Endorsed the Two-Citizen-Parent, Born-on-the-Soil Definition of “natural born Citizen?”

by Sharon Rondeau

(Jan. 9, 2024) — On Monday, 45th President and leading 2024 Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump reposted on his TruthSocial account a headline from The Gateway Pundit, founded and operated by Jim Hoft, referencing a recent article by law clerk and former Trump adviser Paul Ingrassia opining that fellow Republican primary candidate Nikki Haley is not constitutionally eligible to serve as president or vice president.

Written on New Year’s Day and published at American Greatness and Ingrassia’s Substack, the article boasts the headline, “The Constitution Absolutely Prohibits Nikki Haley From Being President Or Vice President” and is subtitled, “Nikki Haley’s flagrant defiance of the Constitution’s textual prerogative, if allowed to continue, will thrust all that remains of the Framers’ now-enervated handiwork into inexorably aimless waters.”

The Gateway Pundit publicized Ingrassia’s article the following day.

Ingrassia describes himself as “President Trump’s go-to source on political and social commentary.”

His “X” account contains a January 6, 2024 post featuring Trump praising both Ingrassia and another individual, Cynthia Hughes, for “doing the ‘Freedom Project.'” ”I love what you’re doing,” Trump states in the video. ”I have such respect for so many of those people that are really held hostage by our government. What they’ve done to the people that we know and that we respect and that we love — it’s just a terrible thing. It’s an injustice; there’s never been anything like it, in my opinion, in the history of our country, and we’re going to have to do something about it, and we will do something…we have a big election coming up, and I hope everything works out well with the election, and if it does, you have a real friend…You’re going to have a great life… Things are going to happen; it’s going to turn around, and things are going to happen for you…”

The “Patriot Freedom Project” to which Trump was likely referring was held January 6 in Toms River, NJ and described as a “commemorative gathering.”

In his subject article, Ingrassia wrote, in part:

The question of natural born citizenship is crystal clear, though often gets confused with the more controversial debate surrounding birthright citizenship.  From the outset, it should be stressed that the two are entirely different constitutional considerations.  The legal question of natural born citizenship, as an eligibility requirement for president, is well-settled law, whereas the birthright citizenship issue is still up in the air. 

There is a reason the Founding Fathers attached the requirement of being a “natural born Citizen” to the President (and with the passage of the Twelfth Amendment, the Vice President) only, and no other federal offices.  The idea was to elevate the threshold for the highest elected political office of the land – notably, that language is absent in Article I, which stipulates that lawmakers running for the House or Senate need only be a “citizen” to qualify.  The early debates surrounding passage of the Constitution add support for the view that the Framers wanted to exclude “the admission of Foreigners into the administration of our national Government,” as John Jay wrote to George Washington in July of 1787…

It makes sense that the Constitution’s architects did not license the presidency to anyone born on U.S. soil.  The specific requirement of natural-born citizenship, which is absent for both members of Congress and the judiciary, was intended to raise the threshold for presidential officeholders in particular.  In Nikki Haley’s case, it is well-documented that neither one of her parents were citizens, natural born or naturalized, at the time of her birth, in 1972.  Investigative journalist Laura Loomer previously reported that a South Carolina-based newspaper included a quote from the Office of Nikki Haley in 2015, stating that “her parents were not U.S. Citizens at the time of her birth in 1972 and did not become citizens until 1978 and 2003” (read Loomer’s full report breaking down Haley’s parents’ citizenship and legal analysis here).  Thus, although the parents may have been lawful residents at the time of her birth on South Carolina soil, which may or may not confer Haley with the privileges of citizenship, importantly, it is obvious that she does not qualify for the Constitution’s higher requirement of natural-born citizenship.

Since the fall, there has been speculation that if he receives the Republican nomination, Trump would choose Haley as his vice-presidential running-mate or alternatively, Vivek Ramaswamy, whose birth circumstances mirror Haley’s.

On Tuesday morning, P&E reader Robert Laity, a constitutional activist himself, sent a video interview between Ingrassia and VOTUM.TV.

Late Tuesday, Ingrassia posted his thanks to Trump for promoting TGP’s article about his “natural born Citizen” article:

On January 3, The Post & Email contacted Ingrassia at the media email address he provided in his “X” profile but which no longer appears to be there. We wrote:

Good morning. I read with great interest your article regarding the meaning of “natural born Citizen” as intended by the Framers. My small newspaper has been covering this issue since its founding in 2009 after questions arose about Barack Obama’s constitutional eligibility given that his claimed father was never a U.S. citizen.

Over the years I have had several attorneys publish their research on the “NBC” question who have reached the same conclusion about not only Nikki Haley, but also Vivek Ramaswamy, Obama, Marco Rubio, Bobby Jindal, Kamala Harris, and possibly the late Sen. John McCain.

It is interesting you boldly take this stand, as several months before the 2020 election then-Prof. John Eastman published a similar column at Newsweek and received considerable backlash from the mainstream media and now, a criminal prosecution by the Fulton County DA.

In April 8, 2011, 19 days before the Obama White House released an image purported to represent his original “birth certificate,” one of my readers, accompanied by two Arizona state legislators, flew to New York City to meet with then-businessman Donald Trump to provide him with the research they and a New Jersey attorney, Mario Apuzzo, had conducted in the course of filing legal challenges to Obama’s eligibility. Mr. Apuzzo joined the meeting with Mr. Trump on speakerphone.  Tragically, Mr. Apuzzo has since passed away.

Several of my readers have attempted to raise the issue of Harris’s lack of U.S.-citizen parents to election officials since she announced her presidential aspirations in 2019 about which extensive research has been carried out.

Would you be open to providing me with a statement or brief interview regarding your research and conclusions on the subject?

Thank you very much for considering.

Sharon Rondeau, Editor
The Post & Email
www.thepostemail.com
PO Box 113
Canterbury, CT 06331-0113

As of publication, we have not received a response.