Former President Donald Trump recently shared an article this week claiming that Nikki Haley is disqualified from being president or vice president because her parents were “not U.S. citizens at the time of her birth.”
“In @Nikki Haley’s situation, reports indicate that her parents were not U.S. citizens at the time of her birth in 1972. Based on the Constitution as interpreted by @PaulIngrassia, this disqualifies Haley from presidential or vice-presidential candidacy under the 12th Amendment,” wrote the post shared by Trump on his Truth Social platform.
It has been noted that Trump and his allies have previously made similar claims regarding former President Barack Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris. AP fact-checked the latest round of so-called “birtherism” conspiracy theories against Haley and found the outlandish claims to be baseless, which was never really in question.
“Haley is a natural-born U.S. citizen who is eligible to serve as president. The former ambassador to the United Nations was born on Jan. 20, 1972, in Bamberg, South Carolina, according to information on her official website when she was governor of the state,” the AP wrote, adding:
But experts agree Haley is a legitimate candidate as defined by the Constitution, regardless of her parents’ citizenship status. Her birth in Bamberg makes her a natural-born citizen, one of three qualifications to hold the U.S. presidency.
The U.S. Constitution clearly states in Article II, Section 1 that “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”
The author of the article Trump shared about his former ambassador to the U.N., Paul Ingrassia, offered his appreciation to the GOP frontrunner on X:
Thank you, President Trump, for sharing this very important piece from the @gatewaypundit discussing an article I wrote about Nikki Haley’s ineligibility to run for President because she is not a natural born citizen under Article II, Section 1, and therefore runs afoul of the Constitution.
This could not have been done without the great investigative work by @LauraLoomer, who uncovered that neither one of Haley’s parents were US citizens when she was born in 1972.
The Gateway Pundit is a fringe, far-right website known for spreading inaccurate, conspiracy theory-based information about the 2020 election. “In the wake of the 2020 election, it peaked at nearly 50 million visits a month, according to one estimate, illustrating the power of viral disinformation,” Reuters noted in December 2021 of the highly trafficked site, adding:
Reuters found the site’s often-debunked election-fraud claims were cited in about 100 of more than 800 threatening or harassing messages sent to election officials since last November
