Trump amplifies false claim about Nikki Haley's presidential eligibility

Two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, the first contest of the primary elections, a headline from the conservative website American Greatness claimed: "The Constitution Absolutely Prohibits Nikki Haley From Being President Or Vice President."

In the January 1, 2024 article and corresponding Substack piece, Paul Ingrassia, a writer for the New York Young Republican Club, argued that since "neither one of her parents were citizens, natural born or naturalized, at the time of her birth in 1972," Haley "does not qualify for the Constitution's higher requirement of natural-born citizenship."

The allegation soon made its way to the Gateway Pundit, a far-right website that has previously published misinformation about elections. Trump amplified the article's headline in a January 8 post on his social media platform Truth Social.

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Screenshot from American Greatness taken January 10, 2024

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Screenshot from Truth Social taken January 10, 2024

Other claims about Haley's background and eligibility for office amassed tens of thousands of interactions across platforms, according to CrowdTangle, a social media insights tool.

There is a long tradition of American politicians casting doubt on the background and qualifications of their political rivals, a tactic Trump has exploited over the years.

During Barack Obama's presidency, the billionaire was one of the chief promoters of a debunked conspiracy theory that the Democrat was not born in the United States. The "birther" narrative resurfaced before the 2020 election, when Trump falsely claimed then-vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris was ineligible to hold office because her parents were foreign-born.

The latest claims against Haley -- who served as ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump administration and polls show is one of his chief challengers in the primaries -- are similarly inaccurate.

"It is obviously false," said Jim Gardner, a University at Buffalo professor specializing in constitutional and election law, of the theory promulgated in the American Greatness piece. "There is no eligibility requirement for parents."

AFP contacted Haley's campaign for comment, but a response was not forthcoming.

'Eligible to serve'

Haley wrote in her autobiography "Can't Is Not an Option: My American Story" (archived here) that both of her parents were born to Sikh families in the Punjab region of India. They married and later emigrated to Canada before settling down in South Carolina in 1969.

That is where Haley was born three years later, making her eligible to be president (archived here). Haley's office told The State newspaper in 2015 that her father and mother became US citizens in 1978 and 2003, respectively (archived here).

Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution says "no person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States" shall be eligible for the presidency (archived here). They must also be at least 35 years old.

"Governor Haley holds her citizenship by virtue of her birth in South Carolina; she has never been through, or been eligible to go through, a naturalization proceeding," said David Super, a law and economics professor at Georgetown University, in a January 9, 2024 email.

"She is therefore on the citizens by birth side of the divide and eligible to serve."

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Timeline of key events leading to the US presidential election on November 5, 2024 (AFP / Jonathan WALTER, Anibal MAIZ CACERES, Gal ROMA)

Super said the 14th Amendment to the Constitution (archived here) further confirms Haley's citizenship, and therefore her eligibility for office.

Ratified after the Civil War, the measure sought to extend constitutional rights and liberties to formerly enslaved people -- and prohibit states from denying them. The amendment explicitly grants citizenship to "all persons born or naturalized in the United States."

There are limited exceptions for people born to foreign diplomats, who are not subject to US laws (archived here). But Super said  that "nobody is suggesting that that was the case with Governor Haley's parents."

"The arguments against Governor Haley's eligibility hinge on precisely the kind of hypertechnical arguments about citizenship that the 14th Amendment sought to end," he said.

AFP has fact-checked other misinformation about the 2024 US elections here.