With Kamala Harris in the race, is Donald Trump bringing birtherism back?
Oh, no, he didn’t.
But, oh, yes, he … did!
President Donald Trump, who took the lead of a bonkers “birther” conspiracy movement against former President Barack Obama, wasted little time before greeting Democratic front-runner Joe Biden’s newly announced running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, with a new version of the same bogus smear.
Responding to a question from reporters, Trump dubiously cited a “highly qualified, very talented lawyer” Thursday in saying that he didn’t know whether Harris was qualified to serve as vice president or not.
Trump was referring to a Newsweek opinion piece by Chapman University law professor John Eastman that takes giant leaps of logic to question Harris’ eligibility, despite her having been born in California, which qualifies her for the job.
The theory is easily shot down in a rebuttal essay by UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh. But as we saw with the Obama birther myth, conspiracy theories take on a life of their own when a candidate like Trump needs to build a movement.
“I heard it today that she doesn’t meet the requirements,” Trump said. “I have no idea if that’s right. I would have assumed that the Democrats would have checked that out before she gets chosen to run for vice president.”
Of course they did. As the Oakland-born daughter of a Jamaican immigrant father and an Indian immigrant mother, she’s legally eligible to run. Case closed.
But Trump and his campaign are desperate. Polls show him slipping further behind Biden, particularly for his poor handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the racial reckoning following the video-recorded death of a Black man, George Floyd, under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer.
This has left Trump’s campaign with a tough dilemma as it tries to obey what some strategists call the first rule of campaigning: Redefine your opponent before your opponent can redefine you.
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