Trump is a savant of both questioning the legitimacy of presidents and presidential candidates and “I’m just sayin’”, so after making a big deal out of Ted Cruz’s Canadian birth, it should come as no surprise that he has also started questioning Marco Rubio’s pedigree.
On Saturday—the day he was getting out the vote in South Carolina—he did a retweet of a supporter:
"@ResisTyr: Mr.Trump...BOTH Cruz AND Rubio are ineligible to be POTUS! It's a SLAM DUNK CASE!! Check it! https://t.co/NjqWP0pP6X"
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 20, 2016
The video suggests that neither Rubio nor Cruz meets the “natural born citizen” standard because Cruz was born in Canada (to an American mother and a Cuban father) and Rubio was born in the U.S., but to non-American parents. They’re both silly arguments, but Trump stuck by them, sort of, on Sunday, telling George Stephanopoulos he was just raising questions, not endorsing any viewpoints: “I think the lawyers have to determine it. It was a retweet. Not so much with Marco. I’m really not familiar with Marco’s circumstance. ... I’m not sure. Let people make their own determination.”
Of course, Rubio’s citizenship, like Cruz’s, probably isn’t the point here. The point is to delegitimize their candidacies by emphasizing to supporters that these two Cuban-Americans just aren’t like us.