White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said that Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), who was named as presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s running mate last week, is eligible to serve as vice president, after President Trump discussed a conspiracy theory that raised doubts about her qualifications.
CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Meadows on “State of the Union” on Sunday whether Harris was eligible to become vice president, prompting the chief of staff to answer, “Sure.”
Meadows’s remarks come as a false theory suggesting the California senator does not meet the required constitutional qualifications to be vice president because her parents were Jamaican and Indian immigrants has spread.
“This is not something that we’re going to pursue,” Meadows said. “Actually, Jake, you and a number in the media, you all have spent more time on it than anybody in the White House has talking about this.”
“I’m more concerned with Kamala Harris’s liberal ideas coming from San Francisco to the rest of America than I am whether she was – where she was born or anything else,” he added.
Trump on Saturday said that his reelection campaign would not be “pursuing” theories that doubt Harris’s eligibility.
“I know nothing about it, but it’s not something that bothers me,” Trump said during a news conference at his golf club in New Jersey, CNN reported. “I just don’t know about it, but it’s not something we will be pursuing.”
The conspiracy primarily rose to the limelight through an op-ed published in Newsweek last week by Chapman University law professor John Eastman.
{mosads}Trump acknowledged Eastman and the op-ed saying: “I heard today that she doesn’t meet the requirements” and calling the professor “very highly qualified” and “brilliant,” according to CNN.
Newsweek ended up apologizing for running the op-ed, saying it “inevitably conveyed the ugly message that Senator Kamala Harris, a woman of color and the child of immigrants, was somehow not truly American.”
Trump promoted “birther” rumors about President Obama years ago that doubted his eligibility to be president by questioning whether he was born in the U.S.