President Trump has fuelled claims described as “idiotic” that Kamala Harris may not have the right by birth to stand as the Democratic party’s vice-presidential candidate, despite being born in the United States. The US president said he would “take a look” into an article by a “very talented” conservative lawyer who wrote that there might be constitutional grounds to dispute Ms Harris’ citizenship and therefore her eligibility for the country’s highest office. The issue has echoes of the so-called birther conspiracy pushed by Mr Trump a decade ago that falsely claimed that Barack Obama was not really an American-born citizen and therefore an illegitimate president — widely viewed as a racist attack on the first black president. Mr Obama eventually published his birth certificate

Source: The Times August 14, 2020 05:15 UTC