Sen. Rand Paul joined Donald Trump on Wednesday in questioning whether Sen. Ted Cruz is eligible to be president.
“You know, I think without question he is qualified and would make the cut to be prime minister of Canada, absolutely without question, he is qualified and he meets the qualifications,” Paul told Fox News Wednesday.
Cruz was born in Canada, and Trump has been talking about whether Cruz qualifies as a natural born U.S. citizen under the Constitution for the last few days. Trump went so far on Wednesday as to say Cruz should get a court decision to settle the question.
Paul said it would be ironic if Cruz came under no scrutiny on the question his eligibility after President Obama faced similar questions based on much less evidence.
“It is interesting, and I think sometimes people point out that it’s a double standard, in the sense that people went out, hot and heavy, including Donald Trump, about President Obama when there was really nothing more than conjecture that he wasn’t born in the country,” Paul said. “And yet, there hasn’t been really the same outrage at all for some one who actually is born in another country.”
This issue is controversial, and has never been conclusively settled by the Supreme Court. A consensus of legal scholarship seems to favor Cruz’s case that he is eligible, but it is technically still an open question, which Paul mentioned.
“I don’t think we’ve ever gone through the court system for the Supreme Court to decide one way or another,” Paul said.
