From what I read of Tribe's opinion piece, Tribe did not actualy opine that Cruz was not "natural born" but pointed out the inconsistency between Cruz's position and his normally originalist instincts. Yet Trump is suggesting that Tribe has cast doubts on Cruz's eligibility. I did not read all of Tribe's commentary, but I assume Tribe himself would think Cruz qualified since Tribe is not an originalist. If so, then Trump is misleading.
That's your mistake right there. Without reading the whole article, you have no reasonable basis to imply that "Trump is misleading."
The entire article is worth reading, it opens with:
There’s more than meets the eye in the ongoing dustup over whether Ted Cruz is eligible to serve as president, which under the Constitution comes down to whether he’s a “natural born citizen” despite his 1970 Canadian birth. Senator Cruz contends his eligibility is “settled” by naturalization laws Congress enacted long ago. But those laws didn’t address, much less resolve, the matter of presidential eligibility, and no Supreme Court decision in the past two centuries has ever done so. In truth, the constitutional definition of a “natural born citizen” is completely unsettled, as the most careful scholarship on the question has concluded. Needless to say, Cruz would never take Donald Trump’s advice to ask a court whether the Cruz definition is correct, because that would in effect confess doubt where Cruz claims there is certainty.
Note: the part of the quote above that I highlighted in
red, is a clue to why Cruz's claim falls apart. While Mr. Tribe is correct, in the more general sense, that "constitutional definition of a “natural born citizen” is completely unsettled," in Mr. Cruz's case it is quite clear. As I noted in many other posts here, Cruz's 'citizenship at birth' is clearly citizenship granted by statute, i.e., the historical
naturalization acts that many claim provide a 'definition' of natural born citizenship (which they do not), and the version of the
naturalization act operative on December 22, 1970 that governs the statutory grant of his citizenship (see below).
As Bigun has pointed out several times, Cruz himself never makes a claim of being a
natural born Citizen (at least not when I have read/heard him speak on the topic). And I have also noticed that most of his most strident supporters, e.g., Mark Levin, also never make the claim that he is a
natural born Citizen. What both of these learned men are doing, is attempting to ride the wave of confusion that the general populace (and a great deal of the political and media classes) has about the difference between a "natural born Citizen" and a "citizen at birth." They both constantly bleat about people "doubting my (his) citizenship," when there has never been any serious doubt about his US citizenship at all. Based on the birth facts that he and his campaign have presented, it is fairly certain that Mr. Cruz is a statutory US citizen (via the collective naturalization statute, see Sec. 301. [8 U.S.C. 1401 (g)] of
IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY ACT (INA): ACT 301 - NATIONALS AND CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES AT BIRTH, in effect at the time of his birth). (Again, remember that naturalization has a legal and Constitutional definition (that includes all forms of collective naturalization) beyond the most common form of proactive, voluntary naturalization that the foreign born undertake to remedy their alien status.)
That kind of lawyerly constructed double-speak and obfuscation is to be expected from most politicians and pundits, however it is extremely disappointing coming from the likes of Mr. Cruz and Mr. Levin. But I guess none of us should be surprised, they both clearly want Mr. Cruz to win the nomination and election!
If Mr. Cruz were able to say, "I am a US citizen solely by the
nature of my birth, I required no statutory provisions to be in effect at the time of my birth in Canada, to grant my citizenship as a foreign born individual." then he would actually be a natural born Citizen, and hence eligible for the Presidency of the United States. But since he can't, he doesn't.
