Trump says it is 'very strange' that Joe Biden did not take any questions from reporters

President Trump claimed it was ‘very strange’ that ‘sleepy’ Joe Biden reportedly did not take questions from a group of a reporters during an event with Kamala Harris and contended ‘there is something going on.’

Over the last week, the Trump campaign and his administration have leveled a number of attacks at the presumptive presidential nominee since the Biden-Harris ticket was announced.

On Sunday, Trump continued to rail against Biden in a Twitter post that suggested his opponents have gotten preferential treatment from reporters.

A short video shared by the Republican National Convention Research shows Biden and Harris at a ballot access signing event on Friday in Delaware.

The pair signed paperwork that get them onto the November election ballots as the official Democratic ticket.

The Republican National Convention Research used footage of Kamala Harris (left) and Joe Biden (right) in its latest attempt to discredit the pair

Very strange. Sleepy Joe never takes questions. Also, his reporters have zero drive. Why can’t my reporters behave like that? Something is going on! https://t.co/SQAq0KVUqw

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 15, 2020

Campaign staffers can be heard corralling members of the press out of the room as they attempt to ask Biden and Harris questions.

Trump retweeted the video onto his official Twitter account with the accompanying message, ‘very strange.’

‘Sleepy Joe never takes questions. Also, his reporters have zero drive. Why can’t my reporters behave like that? Something is going on!’

Trump has long criticized what he referred to as ‘Lamestream Media’ for challenging several claims, many of which were deemed misleading, he’s made throughout his presidency.

Members of Biden’s campaign ushered out a handful of reporters as Harris and Biden (left to right) signed paperwork

Trump wrote on Sunday that it was ‘very strange’ that Joe Biden did not appear to take questions during the event in Delaware

Recently, he abruptly ended a press conference last week when a CBS reporter pushed back on the Trump administration’s claim that it passed the Veterans Choice healthcare law.

While speaking before supporters at the Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey, Trump said that people have tried for ‘decades and decades’ to sign the law and ‘no president’s ever been able to do it, and we got it done.’

Journalist Paula Reid fact checked Trump and reminded him that the Veterans Choice law, which expanded the health care options for veterans, was passed in 2014 under the Obama administration.

Trump then concluded his press conference and walked off stage.

In another instance, Trump was momentarily stumped on Thursday when a Huffpost reporter questioned him about his ‘dishonesties.’

Since his initial campaign days in 2016, President Trump (pictured) has accused the media of bias and has walked out of press conferences when they challenge him on claims

During Trump’s press conference on Saturday, @PaulaReidCBS questioned Trump on why he says he passed the Veterans Choice Program, which was signed into law by Barack Obama in 2014. Trump responded by abruptly leaving the news conference. pic.twitter.com/A6k4tO5k7s

— CBS News (@CBSNews) August 9, 2020

‘Do you regret at all all the lying you’ve done to the American people?’ the reporter asked

‘All the what?’ Trump replied, to which the reporter answered, ‘All the lying. All the dishonesties.’

Trump briefly paused before calling on another reporter without acknowledging the question.

Throughout his presidency, Trump has made a number of misleading or false claims during public press events.

The Washington Post reported in July that Trump has made around 20,000 such claims, so far.

At the Delaware ballot signing, reporters were only allowed one question and the Biden-Harris campaign reportedly relied on a pre-packaged media approach ahead of the Democratic National Convention.

On Friday, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris (left to right) signed paperwork that get them onto the November election ballots as the official Democratic ticket

Kamala (left): ‘I’m signing this because I’m in this race to win, and with that guy right there. And we’re going to get it done’

When asked about Trump’s recent attacks on her candidacy, Harris told reporters she was more focused on the election.

‘I’m signing this because I’m in this race to win, and with that guy right there. And we’re going to get it done,’ she said, according to the New York Post.

The freshest attacks from the Trump administration have been labeled ‘racist’ as it leans into birther conspiracies.

A number of conservative voices, including Mark Levin, have called into question Harris’ eligibility as vice president because her parents were immigrants when she was born in Oakland, California, in 1964.

Harris is an American citizen and eligible to run for office.

Donald Trump’s campaign lawyer promotes ‘birther’ conspiracy theory that Kamala Harris is NOT eligible to be VP because her parents were immigrants

By Nikki Schwab, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

The Trump campaign’s Senior Legal Advisor Jenna Ellis pushed a so-called ‘birther’ narrative Thursday that Kamala Harris isn’t eligible to be vice president because her parents weren’t citizens when she was born in Oakland, California.

‘It’s an open question, and one I think Harris should answer so the American people know for sure she is eligible,’ Ellis told ABC News.

Ellis’ views on the issue came to light after she retweeted a link to a ‘birther’ op-ed published on Newsweek’s website Wednesday written by right-wing law professor John C. Eastman.

President Donald Trump’s (left) campaign adviser Jenna Ellis (right) retweeted an op-ed questioning Kamala Harris’ eligibility to serve as vice president and then backed up her move by saying it’s an ‘open question’

A Newsweek op-ed argued that Kamala Harris (pictured) may not be eligible to be vice president because her parents weren’t U.S. citizens when she was born in California in 1964. One prominent law professor called the editorial ‘racist nonsense’

Jenna Ellis serves as a senior legal adviser to the Trump campaign. A Trump campaign spokesman has yet to respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment on whether the campaign stands by her questioning of Harris’ eligibility

ABC News first reported Jenna Ellis’ comments on Kamala Harris’ eligibility to serve as vice president after Ellis retweeted the ‘birther’ op-ed. She told reporter Will Steakin that, ‘It’s an open question, and one I think Harris should answer so the American people know for sure she is eligible’

Kamala Harris is pictured with her mother Shyamala Gopalan (left), who was born in India, and her father Donald Harris (right), who was born in Jamaica

A Trump campaign spokesman has yet to respond to DailyMail.com’s inquiry on whether the campaign stands by her statement.

Eastman pointed to how Article 2 of the Constitution says only a ‘natural born citizen’ can serve as vice president and president, but suggests there’s some interpretation of the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause that could exclude someone in Harris’ situation.

He also argued that while the modern view of citizenship includes every person born on American soil, that belief started after Harris was born in 1964. ‘Indeed, the Supreme Court has that anyone born on U.S. soil, no matter the circumstances of the parents, is automatically a U.S. citizen,’ he also wrote.

Eastman had run as a Republican in 2010 for California attorney general, but lost his primary. Harris ultimately won the position as a Democrat.

Eastman’s op-ed received tremendous backlash, with many pointing out that it echoed the conspiracy theory pushed by President Donald Trump and others during President Barack Obama’s tenure.

Josh Chafetz, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, called Eastman’s interpretation of eligibility as ‘racist nonsense,’ in a FactCheck.org post on the controversy.

Businessman Trump was one of the most prominent voices to push the ‘birther’ conspiracy about Obama, doing so in early April 2011.

Trump, who was mulling taking on Obama in the 2012 election, made a number of bogus claims including that Obama’s ‘certificate of live birth’ was not an actual ‘birth certificate.’

The president was trying to push the racist narrative that Obama was born in Africa, where his black father was from.

Obama countered at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in late April by jokingly showing the audience his ‘official birth video’ – the opening scenes of Disney’s ‘The Lion King.’

But days earlier, in a move that showed Obama took the political threat seriously, the White House released the president’s long form birth certificate.

It wasn’t until Trump was running in 2016 that he admitted that Obama was born in the United States – though he also claimed, falsely, that it was Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign that started the ‘birther’ conspiracy theory to begin with.

Harris is the second person of color to appear on a major party’s presidential ballot and the second Democratic politician in recent years that Republicans have tried to suggest was born outside the U.S.

HOW THE PHRASE ‘NATURAL BORN CITIZEN’ KEEPS SPARKING ‘BIRTHER’ MOVEMENTS

The Constitution spells out who is eligible for the presidency in Clause 5 of Article 2: ‘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; neither shall any person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.’

And the 12th Amendment extends those qualifications to the vice-president.

Left unexplained is what ‘natural born citizen’ means – and the phrase is defined in no other piece of legislation.

But the 14th Amendment of 1868 is also in the Constitution – and defines who is a citizen.

It says: ‘All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.’

In 1873 the Supreme Court ruled that the phrase ‘subject to its jurisdiction’ was intended to exclude children of non-citizen immigrants.

But that decision was in an arcane question – about whether the 14th Amendment only guaranteed rights to people who were U.S. citizens, and didn’t cover anyone who was only granted ‘citizenship of the state’ by an individual U.S. state – in other words, were free to live and work there.

The majority opinion includes a note that ‘the phrase “subject to its jurisdiction” was intended to ‘exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.’

Two years later the high court ruled that immigrants can only have automatic citizenship for their children when they – the adults – owe ‘allegiance’ to the U.S. and not to a foreign nation.

The concept of allegiance means little today but most people at the time were born in monarchies with limited rights and were subjects, not citizens – and until you became an American citizen, you were still owing allegiance to that monarch, it was argued. ‘Allegiance’ to a foreign monarch and being subject to American ‘jurisdiction’ were not compatible, the justices ruled.

But then in 1898 the Supreme Court ruled that a specific Chinese immigrant’s child was a citizen of the United States, citing the 14th Amendment’s text.

In the case, about Wing Kim Arg, the justices ruled that ‘a child born in the United States, of parents of Chinese descent, who, at the time of his birth, are subjects of the Emperor of China, but have a permanent domicile and residence in the United States, and are there carrying on business, and are not employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China’ was automatically a citizen.

That ruling has been the bedrock of birthright citizenship – known as jus soli – and has led to the other opinions about the amendment being seen as being superseded – although they have never formally been overturned.

The dissenters – or in cruder terms, the losers – said the 14th Amendment and those who passed it intended citizenship to be only for those not claimed by any foreign power in any form, so natural-born citizenship was hereditary – a concept known as jus sanguinis.

Since then the Supreme Court has ruled that a woman born in New York to one U.S. citizen father but brought up abroad was eligible to run for president – she did not – but has never explicitly ruled on whether someone born to one or two non-citizens can.

The fact that scores of millions of Americans have been considered citizens by the federal government in exactly those circumstances would seem to suggest how the justices would rule.

But it leaves Kamala Harris ‘birthers’ a very narrow opportunity to argue that the Supreme Court has never ruled clearly that being born in the U.S. to non-citizen parents makes you ‘natural born’ – as opposed to simply a citizen.

One – in a Newsweek op-ed – claimed that because Mexican guest-workers’ American-born children had been deported in the 1920s, 1940s, and 1950s – the idea of ‘birthright citizenship’ for all really dates from after Harris’ birth.

He also claimed that it was unclear exactly what Harris’ parents’ legal status was and that if they did not have green cards, that might disqualify her too.

Harris, however, is not the first candidate to face questions over eligibility thanks to her parents.

Obama – as well as the bogus claim he was not born in the United States – faced ultra-fringe birther questions because his father was a Kenyan; and the oldest example was Chester Arthur, whose mother alone was American and who also faced questions over a rumor he was born in Canada, not Vermont.

Unhelpfully for birthers, none of those who faced these questions were successfully disqualified by any court – in fact, no challenge of the kind has ever succeeded.

Perhaps even more unhelpfully, the Newsweek op-ed writer, law professor John Eastman, previously campaigned for Ted Cruz, who was born in Canada to one U.S. citizen parent and a Cuban father, suggesting his claim that Harris might not be eligible was more politically expedient that constitutionally sound.

And the ‘academic institution’ which he is affiliated with – the Claremont Institute – has previously awarded a fellowship to Jack Posobiec, the alt-right tweeter who originated the bogus Pizzagate conspiracy theory.

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk

Trump says it is ‘very strange’ that Joe Biden did not take any questions from reporters

Donald Trump’s campaign lawyer promotes ‘birther’ conspiracy theory that Kamala Harris is NOT eligible to be VP because her parents were immigrants

HOW THE PHRASE ‘NATURAL BORN CITIZEN’ KEEPS SPARKING ‘BIRTHER’ MOVEMENTS