by Sharon Rondeau
(Jan. 23, 2024) — In an interview just before 8:00 a.m. EST Tuesday as primary voting in New Hampshire was under way, 2024 Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley made an in-person appearance on location with “Fox & Friends” co-hosts Ainsley Earhardt, Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy to make the case she is more qualified than Donald Trump to be the party’s standard-bearer and nominee.
The interview began with a report that all six Republican voters residing in Dixville Notch, an unincorporated village in Coos County where voting is open just after midnight on election day, cast their votes for her.
New Hampshire holds the first presidential primary in the nation following the Iowa caucuses, which consist of members of each precinct convening at their election location, promoting their chosen candidate if they wish and casting their votes, which are tallied and announced directly afterward.
According to recent polling, Haley, who placed third in Iowa, is second in New Hampshire. Depending on the survey, she is within single digits of Trump to as many as 16 points behind him.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who placed second in Iowa, withdrew from the race Sunday and endorsed Trump.
Launching a video of a Trump campaign event in Laconia on Monday in which Trump said (1:48), “Now we have one left. We started off with…13, and now we’re down to two people, and I think one person will probably be gone tomorrow, and the other one will be gone in November…,” the co-hosts asked Haley for her response.
“In his dreams; I’m not going anywhere,” Haley said, stating that the primary race is “not a coronation; this is a democracy.” She pledged to continue her campaign in South Carolina, which has the second primary in the nation and in which she served in the state legislature and as governor for two terms, thn on to “Super Tuesday,” which is March 5.
“I’ve got one more fella in the race,” Haley said, acknowledging the contest began with 13 people, and said her campaign has “outsmarted, outworked all 12 of those candidates…the energy is good.”
As would be expected from the mainstream media, no questions arose about her eligibility in accordance with the “natural born Citizen” requirement of Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S. Constitution.
Haley’s parents came to the United States in 1969 as immigrants from India and Canada. She was born in Bamberg, SC in 1972, but her parents did not naturalize as U.S. citizens until 1998 and 2003, respectively, according to a report gleaned from Haley’s 2012 autobiography, “Can’t Is Not an Option: My American Story.”
Later in the interview, Haley accused Trump, for whom she served as United Nations ambassador for two years, of “lying” when he “feels threatened” (11:05) but said she does not “dislike” him.
She was critical to the three co-hosts of their network’s coverage of her previous remarks on Social Security requirements given Trump’s invoking of them on both social media and in television advertisements.
She claimed Trump is focused on “vengeance” and will bring “chaos” to the White House.
When Earhardt asked if, in the midst of reportedly strong support and the prospect of “unifying the Republican Party,” she would consider serving as Trump’s running mate, Haley responded (11:59), “I am not interested in vice president. I don’t play for seconds; I’m not doing that now.”
The 12th Amendment, ratified in 1804, requires all vice presidential candidates to meet the constitutional qualifications of the president.
On January 8, Trump reposted on his TruthSocial account a graphic from an article at The Gateway Pundit providing analysis of an editorial written by law clerk and former Trump administration intern Paul Ingrassia positing that Haley is not a natural born Citizen and is in “flagrant defiance of the Constitution’s textual prerogative” with her campaign.
Ingrassia’s legal analysis of the term the Framers placed in the Constitution solely for the president generated immediate blowback from the mainstream media, which characterized Trump’s promotion of Ingrassia’s article as a “false claim” or “false ‘birther’ claim,” referring to when Trump questioned Barack Hussein Obama’s eligibility to serve as president.
Ingrassia’s article additionally drew the attention of “War Room” host Steve Bannon, who served as a senior advisor in the Trump White House and interviewed Ingrassia last week on another subject. Toward the end of the interview, Bannon pledged to explore the “natural born Citizen” topic from Ingrassia’s viewpoint, although he did not say when that might take place.
In a follow-up article published January 19, Ingrassia opined it is important to discover whether Haley’s parents were “lawful residents” at the time of her birth in addition to when they became U.S. citizens. “The burden of proving citizenship must be placed squarely on Haley’s campaign,” Ingrassia wrote. “If the question ever gets litigated, any objective court should make a determination of the lawfulness of Haley’s parents’ residency status based on the laws of 1972, and not attempt to make equivocations between the generally understood meaning of citizenship some fifty years ago, and its commonly understood meaning today: one that recklessly (and suicidally) confers citizenship upon anyone who makes it to these shores, including the anchor babies of illegal aliens. The Biden regime’s interpretation of citizenship would have been abhorrent to the framers of the Constitution, all our Founding Fathers, and nearly every generation in American history up until five minutes ago, who toiled long and hard for the privileges and immunities of citizenship. Simply because that longstanding precedent is ignored and mocked with impunity today does not make it right, nor does it abnegate the urgency to enforce our laws…”
CNN reported it sought and obtained comment from Ingrassia about his position on “natural born Citizen” but that a “legal consensus” disagrees with it.
“Thanks to the 14th Amendment,” CNN wrote, “anyone born on American soil automatically becomes a citizen.”
There is no mention of “natural born Citizen” in the 14th Amendment, and its phraseology includes the qualifier “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”
On that issue, Ingrassia wrote:
Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment states as follows: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Several points must be underscored: First, this amendment deals with the basic privileges and immunities of American citizenship – and, specifically, the citizenship status of the approximately four million slaves freed because of the Union’s victory over the Confederacy in the Civil War. The architects of this amendment were patently not contemplating Presidential Eligibility, the domain of Article II, and, notably, the only such article in the entire Constitution where the term “natural-born citizenship” arises.
Those who otherwise like to conflate the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment with questions of Presidential Eligibility cite the landmark Supreme Court decision, United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898). There, the Supreme Court decided that the child of two lawfully residing Chinese immigrants should be conferred all the privileges and immunities of citizenship on the basis of birthright.
In Wong Kim Ark and as Ingrassia related, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in its opinion, “The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At common-law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all children born in a country of parents who were its citizens became themselves, upon their birth, citizens also. These were natives, or natural-born citizens, as distinguished from aliens or foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction without reference to the citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first.”
During his term in the White House, Trump indicated an interest in rescinding the policy of “birthright citizenship” which renders virtually anyone born in the United States, regardless of his or her parents’ status, a U.S. citizen and on the campaign trail reiterated his support for tackling it in a second term.
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8 responses to “Haley: “I am Not Interested in Vice President””
Even if born in the United States, one is not an NBC who is born of parents who are permanent residents. Permanent residents is a status that requires that naturalization be undertaken to become “Citizen[s]”. Prior to naturalization permanent residents are still foreign nationals.
Author – “In Wong Kim Ark and as Ingrassia related, the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in its opinion, ‘The Constitution does not, in words, say who shall be natural-born citizens. …As to this class there have been doubts, but never as to the first.”
People often say that Justice Gray citing this passage of the Minor v Happersett decision is proof that he cited it because he agrees with it and that a natural born citizen requires two citizen parents. However that ignores his stated reasons for citing Minor.
Starting at paragraph 55 Justice Gray describes the opinion in the Slaughter House Cases. And he highlights Justice Miller’s statement ‘The phrase ‘subject to its jurisdiction’ was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign states, born within the United States.’ from that case. This statement by Justice Miller would preclude children with alien parents from being citizens. Justice Gray however points out why this statement “unsupported by any argument, or by any reference to authorities” is nonbinding dicta (Paragraph 57).
Justice Gray then points out that the very same set of Justices (with the exception of Chief Justice Chase who had died) refused to come to a conclusion about children born in the US to alien parents (Paragraph 59).
“That neither Mr. Justice Miller, nor any of the justices who took part in the decision of the Slaughter House Cases, understood the court to be committed to the view that all children born in the United States of citizens or subjects of foreign states were excluded from the operation of the first sentence of the fourteenth amendment, is manifest from a unanimous judgment of the court, delivered but two years later, while all those judges but Chief Justice Chase were still on the bench …”
Justice Gray was not highlighting the ” all children born in a country, of parents who were its citizens” statement in Minor but the fact that the Minor Court did not conclude the situation of “[s]ome authorities go further, and include as citizens children born within the jurisdiction, without reference to the citizenship of their parents.”
Justice Gray resolved those doubts.
In Ingrassia’s January 19th article he cited Professor Michael Ramsey in a way that makes it seem Ramsey favors the Vattel viewpoint. Professor Ramsey has since published a clarification on his blog that he believes the Haley is a natural born citizen.
https://originalismblog.typepad.com/the-originalism-blog/2024/01/is-nikki-haley-a-natural-born-citizenmichael-ramsey.html
There seems to be several constitutional law professors saying Haley is eligible, and none saying she isn’t.
The U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1, Clause 5, John Bingham (primary author of the 14th Amendment), Minor v Happersett, Wong Kim Ark (by citing and accepting Minor v Happersett) say she isn’t.
If Haley were to apply to become a British Subject/Citizen she would be able to claim such status due to her British Commonwealth heritage under provision of the British Nationality Act of 1947.
Noteworthy is the fact that Obama, Ramaswamy, Cruz, Jindal and Harris would also be able to do the same. It has come out in the last day that Obama pressured Biden to choose Harris as his VP.
It is apparent by these facts that the Brits may possibly be attempting to reclaim their past colonies or to interject their influence into our government at the highest levels. King Charles III is after all a New World Order globalist as are Obama, Biden, the Clintons and the Bushes.
There can be NO DOUBT that the founders did NOT want ANY persons with a claim to BRITISH SUBJECTHOOD to be our President or VP, other than those founding citizens who fought for US Independence in the 18th Century.
“We the People” still do NOT want them now!!!
Ramsey is wrong. Haley is NOT a Natural Born Citizen. Neither is Obama, Ramaswamy, Harris, Duckworth, Swarzenegger, Cruz, Rubio, Jindal or Gabbard.
I believe that rescinding birthright citizenship must be accomplished by overturning Wong Kim Ark decision through the U.S. Supreme Court – or “we’ll never hear the end of it”. If Trump is elected POTUS this November and he temporarily suspends birthright citizenship via Executive Order (E.O.), another OBiden-type POTUS following Trump will cancel his E.O. and we will be left at square one, again. A successful overturn of Wong Kim Ark may end up as a twofer with the U.S. Supreme Court finally defining the term “natural born Citizen”.