Senator Ted Cruz no doubt hoped the release of his birth certificate to The Dallas Morning News would settle the question of whether he is a "natural born" American citizen and thus eligible to run for president. Instead, the revelation that Cruz is a dual Canadian-American citizen -- which, given that his Canadian birth was already widely known, should not have come as a surprise -- ignited the debate anew. (Cruz, for the record, is more than happy to renounce the country of his birth).
Real estate mogul and noted political sage Donald Trump has been surprisingly subdued on the issue of Cruz's citizenship. "I don't know the circumstances. I heard somebody told me he was born in Canada. That's really his thing," he told ABC News last week with no apparent sense of irony.
But that was last week. Following the release of the birth certificate, Trump went into full birther mode, as the National Review reported:
Donald Trump, the nation's self-appointed arbiter of presidential eligibility, today made his most unequivocal statement on the matter: The real-estate mogul strongly suggested he does not believe the Texas senator is a natural-born citizen, as the Constitution requires all presidents be, and urged him to run for office in Canada. "Ted Cruz is just the kind of conservative the Canadian parliament needs," Trump wrote on Twitter.
The curious thing was that the magazine's scoop was ignored by other media typically hungry for one of Trump's nuggets of wisdom. The reason becomes clear when you glance at the embedded tweet near the bottom of the post.
Ted Cruz is just the kind of conservative the Canadian parliament needs. I wish him all the best in his future endeavors.
— Donald J. Drumpf (@RealDonalDrumpf) August 19, 2013
Once the magazine realized that the @RealDonalDrumpf Twitter feed is not handled by The Donald, National Review yanked the post, though not quickly enough to avoid being cached by Google.
