Trump stokes ‘birther’ conspiracy theory about Kamala Harris

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President Donald Trump says he has “heard” Democratic candidate Kamala Harris “doesn’t qualify” to serve as US vice-president, amplifying a fringe legal theory critics decry as racist.

She was born in the US to a Jamaican father and Indian mother in Oakland, California, on 20 October 1964.

As such, she is eligible to serve as president or vice-president.

For years, Mr Trump promoted a false “birther” theory that ex-President Barack Obama was not born in the US.

Ms Harris, a California senator, was named on Tuesday as the first woman of colour to serve as running mate on a main-party US presidential ticket.

She is deputy to Democratic White House candidate Joe Biden, who will challenge Mr Trump, a Republican, in November’s general election.

“The VP has the same eligibility requirements as the president,” Juliet Sorensen, a law professor at Northwestern University, told the Associated Press (AP) news agency.

“Kamala Harris, she has to be a natural-born citizen, at least 35 years old, and a resident in the United States for at least 14 years. She is. That’s really the end of the inquiry.”

Anyone born in the US and subject to its jurisdiction is a natural born citizen, regardless of the citizenship of their parents, says the Cornell Legal Information Institute.

The Biden campaign sent a scathing statement in response to the president stoking the false conspiracy theory.

“Donald Trump was the national leader of the grotesque, racist birther movement with respect to President Obama and has sought to fuel racism and tear our nation apart on every single day of his presidency,” a Biden campaign spokesman said in an email.

“So it’s unsurprising, but no less abhorrent, that as Trump makes a fool of himself straining to distract the American people from the horrific toll of his failed coronavirus response that his campaign and their allies would resort to wretched, demonstrably false lies in their pathetic desperation.”

Trump stokes ‘birther’ conspiracy theory about Kamala Harris

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