Once again, Donald Trump
is raising birther claims – this time not about President Barack
Obama but about Senator Kamala Harris. After a conservative law
professor questioned Ms. Harris' eligibility to serve as president
and vice president based on her parents' immigration status at the
time of her birth, Mr Trump was asked about the argument during an
August 13 “news conference.”
Trump said …
"I heard today
that she doesn't meet the requirements. I have no idea if that's
right, I would've -- I would have assumed the Democrats would have
checked that out before she gets chosen to run for vice president.
That's very serious."
Trump then asked the
reporter if she was saying Harris doesn't qualify because Harris
"wasn't born in this country." He referred to the lawyer
who raised the issue in a Newsweek article, Chapman University
professor John Eastman, as "very highly qualified."
Earlier in the day, Trump
campaign senior legal adviser Jenna Ellis also presented Eastman’s
op-ed as grounds for a birther revival, calling the baseless concern
“an open question, and one I think Harris should answer so the
American people know for sure she is eligible.”
(Matt Stieb. “Trump
Revives Racist Birther Conspiracy for Kamala Harris.”
Intelligencer. August 13, 2020.)
Trump
son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner told “CBS This Morning”
co-host Anthony Mason on August 14 that Trump was not agreeing or
disagreeing with Eastman. “He said that he had no idea” whether
Eastman was “right or wrong,” Kushner said.
Said Kushner, the enabler:
“Let his words speak for himself.”
(Lynn Sweet. “Trump
revives racist ‘birtherism’ after Biden taps Harris for vice
president.” Chicago Sun-Times. August 14, 2020.)
Kamala Harris immigrant parents -- Shyamala Gopalan and Donald Harris
Kamala Harris mother,
Shyamala Gopalan, who died in 2009, was a cancer researcher from
southern India who moved to California for graduate school before
Harris was born. Her father, economist Donald Harris, emigrated from
Jamaica.
Kamala was born in
Oakland, California, United States of America, on October 20, 1964.
Harris is the first Black and South Asian American woman on a major
party ticket.
"Under section 1 of
the 14th Amendment, anyone born in the United States is a United
States citizen. The Supreme Court has held this since the 1890s.
Sheldon Goldman, a
distinguished professor of political science emeritus at the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst, called the argument being
made about Harris' eligibility "100% bogus."
Laurence Tribe, a
constitutional law professor at Harvard University, called Prof
Eastman's argument "garbage" and "racist birtherism
redux.”
Jessica Levinson, a
professor at Loyola Law School, told the Associated Press: "Let's
just be honest about what it is: It's just a racist trope we trot out
when we have a candidate of color whose parents were not citizens."
(“Trump stokes
'birther' conspiracy theory about Kamala Harris.” BBC News. August
14, 2020.)
The accusation against
Harris is similar to the Trump-propagated birther conspiracy theories
about President Barack Obama, but with more sweeping implications:
Obama birthers suggested that nonwhite people are only contingently
American, whereas Harris birthers reject the citizenship of up to 18
million Americans.
A cadre of racists allege
that these children do not automatically receive American
citizenship. And, the conservative legal movement continues to
entertain their lie. Some media outlets give these quacks a megaphone
through which to launder their racist falsehoods. In truth, Eastman
is not qualified to pass judgment on anyone’s citizenship. He spins
fables that become the foundation for birtherism 2.0.
Back in 2011, Mr Trump
began stoking right-wing theories that President Obama might have
been born in Kenya. Even when Mr Obama produced a copy of his birth
certificate in April that year showing he was born in Hawaii, Mr
Trump continued to claim it was a "fraud.”
Donald Trump is a racist
who elevates the efforts of the alt-right. He has a long history of
bigoted actions that continues to this day. Remember, recently Trump
cast peaceful demonstrators in the streets after George Floyd's death
as "THUGS" and criminals. He has repeatedly made appeals to
suburban White voters, specifically women he describes as "Suburban
Housewives," warning that polices created by the Obama-Biden
administration to dismantle segregation in housing will destroy their
neighborhoods.
Trump told Wisconsin
voters during a recent tele-town hall that those housing rules would
bring "who knows into your suburbs." And he has described
the toppling of statues of Confederate generals and slave-owning
figures from America's history as an attack on the nation's heritage
and founding principles.
(Maeve Reston. “Trump's
birther lie about Kamala Harris magnifies racist themes of his
campaign.” CNN. August 15, 2020.)
Birtherism is a racist
smear. It is a tactic Trump used to get himself into politics, and
now he uses it again to discredit one of the most successful office
holders in the United States. You can say birtherism is “campaign
strategy,” but that doesn't reduce its charge as unmitigated
racism. It is part of Trump's plan to advance conspiracy theories and
a rhetoric of white supremacy. This makes Trump an unashamed racist
willing to use anything to gain reelection, and that includes a
campaign to “make America hate again.”
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