The Birth Certificate Donald Trump Won’t Talk About

HUNTER WALKER/TMP

In the leadup to the 2012 election, entrepreneur, perennial presidential flirt and reality television star Donald Trump spent a good deal of time loudly spreading the false conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya and, thus, ineligible to occupy the White House.

However, Trump seems far less interested in discussing the intricacies of 2016’s birther-esque drama — the Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) citizenship saga. TPM has attempted to speak with Trump multiple times over the past three days about the release of Cruz’s birth certificate and revelations the senator holds dual citizenship in Canada and the U.S., but Trump has not responded. 

On Aug. 11, Trump appeared on ABC’s “This Week,” where the network’s Jonathan Karl asked him about Cruz’s Canadian roots. In the interview, Trump said he had been told by “somebody” that Cruz was “born in Canada.” He went on to say that Canadian birth would “perhaps” make Cruz ineligible to run for president. Speaking to Salon the next day, Trump said that, if Cruz was indeed born in Canada, then the senator would have to “explain that.”

However, Trump has not weighed in since Cruz’s birth certificate was released on Sunday prompting the revelation that, as someone born in Canada, Cruz is a dual citizen. TPM first attempted called Trump’s office about the issue on Monday. During another attempt on Thursday morning, Rhona Graff, Trump’s assistant and a vice president at the Trump Organization, said he was “traveling.”

“If he’s able to get back to you and wants to respond, then you know he definitely will,” Graff said.

Trump’s quest to resolve the non-issue of Obama’s birthplace was relentless. He even took creditwhen the White House released the President’s “long form” birth certificate in April 2011. Since Trump seemed interested in getting an explanation from Cruz as well, it seemed almost inconceivable he would not want to weigh in on the release of Cruz’s certificate. TPM tried his office a final time Thursday afternoon. Graff said Trump was “visiting one of his many properties” and assured TPM she passed the message on to “somebody who’s with him” and that he would respond “if he gets it and wants to reply.”

In the meantime, Trump posted over 15 messages on his Twitter page during the course of the day Thursday. Since it seems to be his preferred mode of communication, TPM also tried to talk with Trump about Cruz on Twitter. He has not responded.

Release of Sen. Ted Cruz’s Canadian birth certificate sparks questions about dual citizenship

By Scott Kaufman/Raw Story

On Sunday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-T) released his birth certificate to the Dallas Morning News. The official document is from the Edmonton branch of the Province of Alberta’s Department of Health, and indicates that the Republican presidential hopeful was born in Calgary to a Cuban father and an American mother. To those who believe natural-born citizenship requires birth on United States soil, like Donald Trump, a Cruz candidacy would present similar eligibility issues to those that both President Obama and his opponent, Sen. John McCain, faced during the 2008 election. Constitutional scholars, including Cruz himself, think the “birther” issue is irrelevant, given that Cruz’s mother was born in Wilmington, Delaware. Her American citizenship, they claim, makes him a natural-born, instead of a naturalized, citizen of the United States.

The requirement that Presidents be natural-born stems from an idea most succinctly articulated by Alexander Hamilton in “Federalist #68,” in which he notes “the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in [American] councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?” In the case of Cruz, his status as a natural-born citizen would seem to preclude him from being such a creature.

However, Canadian lawyers inform the Morning News that Cruz’s Calgary birth automatically granted him Canadian citizenship because his father, Rafael Cruz, had moved to Canada in the 1960s and was considered a permanent resident at the time of Cruz’s birth in 1970. Canadian law stipulates that the child of a permanent resident is conferred Canadian citizenship.

The result is that Cruz apparently currently retains his citizenship in both the United States and Canada. No one claims that Cruz is a Canadian Manchurian candidate but, as the last two presidential elections have proven, any question about a candidate’s eligibility to hold the Office of the Presidency will find traction in certain portions of the electorate.

Unless, that is, Cruz publicly renounces his Canadian citizenship. His spokeswoman, Catherine Frazier, indicates that is unlikely to happen: “Senator Cruz became a U.S. citizen at birth, and he never had to go through a naturalization process after birth to become a U.S. citizen. To our knowledge, he never had Canadian citizenship, so there is nothing to renounce.”

UPDATE: Cruz renounced his Canadian citizenship on Monday afternoon, but said he had nothing against the country.

“I got my U.S. passport in high school,” he said in a statement reported by the Associated Press.

“Because I was a U.S. citizen at birth, because I left Calgary when I was 4 and have lived my entire life since then in the U.S., and because I have never taken affirmative steps to claim Canadian citizenship, I assumed that was the end of the matter. Now The Dallas Morning News says that I may technically have dual citizenship. Assuming that is true, then sure, I will renounce any Canadian citizenship. Nothing against Canada, but I’m an American by birth and as a U.S. Senator, I believe I should be only an American.”

Matt Romney Suggests His Father Won’t Release Tax Returns Until Obama ‘Releases His Grades And Birth Certificate’

By Judd Legum/Think Progress

Appearing in New Hampshire as a surrogate for his father, Matt Romney suggested to a group of voters that Mitt Romney would not release his tax returns until Barack Obama released “his grades and his birth certificate.”

Concord Patch has the video. Here’s a transcript:

Q: Will Romney eventually open his tax returns, so we can see what’s going on like most candidates will do and have done?

TAGG ROMNEY: We have no idea.

MATT ROMNEY: He has not said that he will not do it. He has also not said that he will. It’s a matter of time until that issue comes up because I think everyone has to get a chance to do that. So I don’t know the answer to that. I’m not sure he knows the answer to that. But he will do everything that he needs to do. He’s certainly not afraid of anything. Hiding anything. I heard someone suggest the other day that as soon as President Obama releases his grades and birth certificate and sort of a long list of things then maybe he’d do it.

Of course, responding to a cacphony of conspiracy theorists, Barack Obama has already released his birth certificate. Craig Romney can view it here.

Mitt Romney would be the first major party candidate since Watergate to refuse to release his taxes. He recently told MSNBC that “I don’t intend to release the tax returns. I don’t.”

UPDATE

This post initially misidentified which Romney son was speaking. It has been corrected.

Thirty percent of GOP still believe Obama not born in U.S.

By Eric W. Dolan

Even after the release of his long-form birth certificate last week, a substantial amount of Republicans still do not believe President Barack Obama has proven he was born in the United States.

A new Zogby interactive poll conducted April 29 to May 2 of 2,020 likely voters found that 30 percent of Republicans and 21 percent of those without a college degree did not believe Obama was born in the U.S. Sixteen percent of all voters said they did not believe Obama has proven he was born in America.

Many so-called "birthers" believe there is persuasive evidence that Obama was born in Kenya in 1961 and that his birth certificate was faked in order to make him eligible for the Presidency. The conspiracy was first conceived during the 2008 campaign.

Reality TV star Donald Trump brought the issue back into the media spotlight when he first revealed he had some doubts that Obama was a U.S. citizen during an interview with ABC News' Ashleigh Banfield in March. Trump had been using the issue to court the media's attention.

On April 27, Obama released his long-form birth certificate, which confirmed that the president was born in Honolulu, Hawaii on August 4, 1961.