Barack Obama was accused of being an illegitimate president by Donald Trump, who popularized the birther movement.
Trump and many of his associates claimed for years that they had evidence proving that Obama was born in Kenya and not Hawaii.
Note that Obama’s father, Barack Obama Sr. was born in Kenya, and his mother, Ann Dunham, was born in Kansas.
Trump and his allies are back with the same old and ineffective script, but this time around, they have cast Kamala Harris in the lead role.
A viral article published in Newsweek — a hit piece that was masked as an op-ed questioned if Harris, who was born in Oakland, California; can be vice president or the president of the United States.
The article was written by a pro-Trump professor of law at Chapman University, John C. Eastman. The author raised eyebrows by asking about Harris’s parents’ status when she was born — her father, Donald J. Harris, is a Stanford University professor emeritus of economics born in British Jamaica.
Harris’s late mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was a breast cancer scientist who had emigrated from India.
While Obama spent months dithering around the topic, in her first interview, the senator from California did not hesitate and hit back at the crazy conspiracy theory about her eligibility for the vice president role.
Harris took on the Trump campaign’s “dirty tactics” by saying: “Lo, ok, I’m very clear-eyed about the fact that they are going to engage, as you said, in what they have done throughout this administration, which is just, let’s just be very candid and straightforward, they’re going to engage in lies, they’re going to engage in deception, they’re going to engage in an attempt to distract from the real issues that are impacting the American people.”
Harris promised to keep fighting the fake reports and stories about her that are being pushed by Trump and his pals.
She went on to say: “I expect they will engage in dirty tactics, and this is going to be a knockdown drag out. And we’re ready. And we’re ready. There is so much at stake in this election, and I’m prepared to fight because this is a fight that is for something, not against something. This is a fight for where we need to be. And as you’ve heard me say many times, I’m very, very clear that we need to focus on what can be unburdened by what has been.”
She concluded by: “But as we also know, nothing, nothing that we have ever achieved that has been about progress has come without a fight.”
After being reminded that Harris is a Californian born inside the United States, an American citizen, and is, therefore, eligible to serve as president or vice president under the U.S. Constitution; Newsweek issued an apology but declined to delete the op-ed.
