Trump targets Nikki Haley with ‘birther’ smears over her immigrant parents
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
Nikki Haley has become the latest target of Donald Trump’s false “birther” claims after he alleged she is ineligible to become president because she was born to immigrant parents.
Under the US constitution, anyone born in the US can be elected president, regardless of their parents’ origins or citizenship status.
Ms Haley, 51, whose popularity appears to be surging according to recent polls, was born in Bamberg, South Carolina, after her parents emigrated from India.
It comes as Chris Christie announced he is dropping his Republican presidential bid at his New Hampshire town hall on Wednesday night.
Mr Christie, 61, had been under intense pressure to bow out of the race to give Mr Trump’s rivals a chance to unite behind a viable alternative to the former president.
The former New Jersey Governor’s departure will likely give Ms Haley an extra boost in the New Hampshire primary in less than two weeks.
Mr Trump’s claims about Ms Haley, a former US ambassador to the UN and governor of South Carolina, come after he spent years falsely claiming Barack Obama was ineligible for the presidency.
Mr Trump, 77, insisted that Mr Obama was born in Kenya rather than Hawaii, and perpetuated lies that his birth certificate was fake.
Now the former president has reshared a post about Ms Haley on his own social media platform, Truth Social, which claimed: “Reports indicate that her parents were not US citizens at the time of her birth in 1972.”
It added: “Based on the Constitution as interpreted by Paul Ingrassia, this disqualifies Haley from presidential or vice-presidential candidacy.”
However, Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor, said the claims “are totally groundless as a legal and constitutional matter”.
He told The Telegraph: “I can’t imagine what Trump hopes to gain by such claims unless it’s to play the race card against the former governor and UN ambassador as a woman of colour – and to draw on the dark wellsprings of anti-immigrant prejudice by reminding everyone that Haley’s parents weren’t citizens when she was born in the USA.”
Samuel Issacharoff, a New York University law professor, said while the birther campaign about Mr Obama was based on law – as if he had been born outside the US he would have been ineligible for the presidency – the claims Ms Haley could be ineligible had no foundation.
“Nikki Haley was born in the United States. That’s the only constitutional requirement to be president,” he said. “She has as much legal entitlement to run for president as he does.”
The “birther” claims come as Mr Trump and his team continue to ramp up their attacks on Ms Haley, who in recent weeks has received a huge boost in momentum in the Republican race.
She is now trailing Mr Trump by seven per cent among primary voters in New Hampshire, according to a CNN poll.
On Wednesday night, she was taking on Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, during the final Republican debate before the Iowa caucuses.
Although Mr Trump qualified for the debate, he is planning to skip it to hold a discussion with Fox News at the same time.
