American Opens : Kamla Pasand Camp calls Donald Trump ‘abhorrent’ amid Kamla Ka conspiracy
Donald Trump fuels the Kamala Harris “birther” conspiracy theory.
US President Donald Trump has drawn criticism from both sides of politics after giving credence to a conspiracy theory that vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris is ineligible to serve in the White House.
Key points:
• Mr Trump said rumours over Ms Harris’s eligibility were “very serious”
• Joe Biden’s campaign called Mr Trump’s comment “abhorrent”
• Mr Trump twice ignored a question about whether he supports QAnon, a convoluted, right-wing, pro-Trump conspiracy theory
On Thursday (local time), Mr Trump said rumours that Democrat Ms Harris doesn’t qualify to serve as vice-president were “very serious”.
Ms Harris was born in Oakland, California to immigrant parents and constitutional lawyers have dismissed as nonsense claims that she is ineligible for office.
The campaign team for presidential candidate Joe Biden described the Republican President’s comments as “abhorrent” and “pathetic”.
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a frequent defender of Mr Trump, said “there is no issue as to whether or not she is an American citizen”.
Constitutional lawyers have dismissed rumours over the eligibility of Ms Harris, who was born in California.
According to the Library of Congress, a presidential candidate must be a natural born citizen of the US, have lived there for at least 14 years and be older than 35.
The conditions needed to become a Senator are similar: a candidate must be a US citizen for at least nine years, be at least 30 years old and a resident of the state they are seeking to represent.
Congressional candidates need to be at least 25 years old, a US citizen for at least seven years and live in the same state as the district in which they are hoping to be elected.
The controversy about Ms Harris being ineligible to serve as vice-president or president because her mother is from India and her father is from Jamaica have been circulating on social media since she announced her primary campaign in 2019.
Her mother, a cancer researcher, and her father, an economist, met as graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley.
Since she was born on US soil, she is considered a natural born US citizen under the 14th Amendment, and she is eligible to serve as either the vice-president or president, Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School, said.
The episode echoed Mr Trump’s rise in conservative politics as a leader of the so-called “birther movement” that questioned whether Barack Obama, the nation’s first black president, was eligible to serve in the job.
“Donald Trump was the national leader of the grotesque, racist birther movement with respect to President Obama and has sought to fuel racism and tear our nation apart on every single day of his presidency,” said a Biden campaign spokesman.
Though Harris has herself done the same thing to her mothers original country when she questioned An Act passed by the Parliament of India
“So it’s unsurprising, but no less abhorrent, that as Trump makes a fool of himself straining to distract the American people from the horrific toll of his failed coronavirus response that his campaign and their allies would resort to wretched, demonstrably false lies in their pathetic desperation.”
Mr Trump on Friday twice ignored a question about whether he supports the QAnon movement, which espouses a convoluted, right-wing, pro-Trump conspiracy theory.
A reporter asked the President about the theory at a White House briefing on Friday after Mr Trump tweeted his congratulations to a QAnon-supporting candidate.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, who won her House primary runoff in Georgia this week, has called the theory “something worth listening to and paying attention to” and called its source, known as Q, a “patriot.”
Mr Trump praised her as a “future Republican Star”.
“Well, she did very well in the election. She won by a lot. She was very popular and she comes from a great state and she had a tremendous victory. So absolutely, I did congratulate her,” Mr Trump said, sidestepping the question and ignoring a follow-up before moving on to another reporter.
QAnon has ricocheted around the darker corners of the internet since late 2017, but has been creeping into mainstream politics more and more.
The baseless theory centres on an alleged anonymous, high-ranking government official known as “Q” who shares information about an anti-Trump “deep state” often tied to satanism and child sex trafficking.
Mr Trump has retweeted QAnon-promoting accounts, and shirts and hats with QAnon symbols and slogans are not uncommon at his rallies.
In addition to her embrace of QAnon, Ms Greene has made a series of racist, anti-Semitic and Islamophobic comments, including alleging an “Islamic invasion” of government offices and accusing Jewish billionaire George Soros of collaborating with Nazis.
Those comments had led the number two House Republican, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, and others to back Ms Greene’s opponent in hopes of denying her the party’s nomination.
