Donald Trump just called Ted Cruz 'an anchor baby in Canada'
"Ted Cruz may not be a US citizen, right? But he's an anchor baby. No, Ted Cruz is an anchor baby in Canada. But Canada doesn't accept anchor babies," Trump said at a campaign event in Nashua, New Hampshire.
"Anchor baby" is a derogatory term for birth tourism, or people entering the US for the purpose of having a child born on US soil, which grants automatic citizenship.
Cruz, a US citizen who renounced his Canadian citizenship, was born in Canada to an American mother, and most legal experts believe he meets the Constitution's requirement that presidents are "natural-born" citizens. But Trump raises doubt about Cruz's eligibility almost daily.
"It is a problem for him, by the way," Trump said of Cruz's birth on Friday. "I think that's one of the reasons he's crashing. I think it's one of the reasons he's a nervous wreck, too. He's figured: 'What the hell happened?'"
He added: "How about this? He's a citizen of Canada. And he was a senator from Texas. And he's a citizen of Canada, joint with the US. How the hell does that work?"
Trump hit Cruz for being a Canadian "anchor baby" after declaring that he was "right" about the US not granting automatic citizenship to children born in the country. The real-estate mogul frequently claims that if parents immigrate to the US illegally, their children do not have US citizenship.
"It doesn't work that way," Trump said. "Let me tell you: I was right about it."