Slam Dunk: Who Says Ted Cruz is a Natural Born Citizen? George Washington and James Madison

And were that not so, Donald Trump would be an anchor baby by his own definition.

by Rod D. Martin
February 11, 2016

Donald Trump has made an issue of Ted Cruz's eligibility to be President since December (or as Trump put it, on national television, since "Ted is doing better in the polls" than he was when Trump said it Cruz was "obviously" eligible back in September).

The problem? George Washington, James Madison and a host of other actual signers of the Constitution disagree.

Those opposing Ted Cruz’s eligibility tend to discuss various English writings, and speak of a “patrilineal principle” whereby they claim that children could in fact be natural born British subjects if born overseas, but only if their father (not their mother) was a subject.

Ignoring whether such an obviously sexist principle would pass muster as Constitutional today, the real issue is that the Founders themselves explicitly repudiated it.