A copy of his birth certificate is widely available. Legal scholars largely agree that he’s constitutionally qualified to serve as president.

But there’s little evidence that the Donald Trump-fueled tempest over Ted Cruz’s eligibility to run for president is fading, forcing the Texas senator to field questions about passports and his parents on national television, just three weeks before the Iowa caucuses.


Cruz is currently on a swing through the state, aiming to lock down his lead in the only place where he — or anyone else — is consistently outpolling Trump. But thanks to the billionaire, the debate over whether Cruz is a “natural born citizen” — he was born in Canada to an American citizen — is coloring the coverage.

So far, Cruz has tried to do a balancing act, asserting in interviews and press gaggles that he is well within the requirements of the law, but also using humor to try to defuse the issue. He also has tried to avoid escalating tensions with Trump, who he has tried hard not to provoke.

Yet behind those breezy dismissals, there’s a recognition among Cruz allies that, given Trump’s ability to dominate a news cycle, the issue is a considerable distraction.

“Virtually every news story, TV show coverage, is bringing up the birther issue and Trump’s statements on it, it’s clearly in the mainstream media right now, people are hearing about it, talking about it, and you have to address it,” said Saul Anuzis, the former chairman of the Michigan GOP, who has informally advised the Cruz campaign on some matters but stressed that he was not speaking for the campaign on this issue. “You can’t just ignore it. And that’s why he’s doing, in my opinion, this two-pronged approach — being definitive on the legal aspects of it, and secondly, making clear this is nothing more than politics.”

Trump suggested Tuesday that if Republicans were to nominate Cruz, they risk picking a candidate who could be “tied up in court for two years” over the issue of his citizenship, and in subsequent interviews has said that he’s “hearing” from undisclosed people that this is a burgeoning concern. Shortly after Trump’s initial comments published, the Cruz campaign tweeted a link to a clip from the TV show “Happy Days” meant to show that Trump was “jumping the shark” in his accusations.

That lighthearted response is in keeping with Cruz’s broader Trump-management strategy: Laugh off criticism to ward off a conflagration, which would risk alienating the Trump supporters that Cruz is hoping will eventually come to his side (separately, both men have insisted they have a good relationship).

“I understand why the news media wants to cover this. The news media is based in New York, New York is based around big, flashy things,” Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler said of the comments pushed by the New York-based Trump. “People in Iowa just have a different set of values, I think they see through these issues. They see them as mildly entertaining, amusing, it’s not how they’re thinking about their choice.”

He added of the citizenship-focused coverage that has dominated cable TV over the last 24 hours, “That’s fine, Cruz is still part of the story, it reminds people he’s out here fighting for every vote right now in Iowa, working harder than anybody else is, getting more attention than anybody else is, even above and beyond this nonsense.”

Eric Woolson, an unaligned Iowa-based GOP strategist, agreed that the issue was not “much more than a distraction and not a long-lived one at that,” if what’s ultimately at issue is a largely settled legal question (though the Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on it).

Still, there is cause for some worry about the staying power of the birther issue. Sen. John McCain, born on a military base in the Panama Canal Zone, faced questions about being born outside the United States during his 2008 race. But McCain benefited from Senate colleagues who rallied around him to declare him eligible, even passing a bipartisan resolution making that point. Cruz, who has rocky relations with many of his Senate colleagues, can count on no such defense.

McCain, in fact, is happy to let Cruz — with whom he has tussled repeatedly in the Senate — twist in the wind.

“I don’t know” whether Cruz is eligible, the Arizona Republican said on a radio show Wednesday night. He went on to add that being born on a military base, as he was, is “different from being born on foreign soil, so I think there is a question. I am not a constitutional scholar on that, but I think it’s worth looking into.”

In the White House, which has been fending off conspiracy theories about the president’s birthplace for years, there was schadenfreude on Wednesday. Asked whether the president “in any way enjoys” the close scrutiny of Cruz’s birth details, White House press secretary Josh Earnest replied, “I don’t know if he does, but I sure do.”

“It would be quite ironic if after seven or eight years of drama around the president’s birth certificate, if Republican primary voters were to choose Sen. Cruz as their nominee — somebody who actually wasn’t born in the United States and only 18 months ago renounced his Canadian citizenship,” he said.

Tommy Vietor, a veteran of the Obama administration who is well-acquainted with the fever swamps of the birther debate, said Trump “can screw up an entire week of your coverage, and in this late phase of the campaign, that’s a huge problem.”

Vietor saw it firsthand — he was involved in the release of the president’s short form birth certificate in 2008. In 2011, Trump stoked the debate over the birthplace of Obama, who was born in Hawaii.

Stressing that he finds Trump’s attacks on Cruz “ludicrous,” Vietor continued, “That’s probably the biggest problem for Cruz, if every question you’re taking is, ‘What about Trump? Are you worried about being ineligible?’”

Since first pulling the pin on the grenade, Trump has shown no signs of letting up.

“It was a very wise move that Ted Cruz renounced his Canadian citizenship 18 months ago,” he tweeted Thursday morning.

Later that afternoon, Trump continued to fuel the fire. “Ted--free legal advice on how to pre-empt the Dems on citizen issue. Go to court now & seek Declaratory Judgment--you will win!”

Cruz hasn’t exactly been caught off-guard. He and Trump have discussed the issue before, as early as 2013. Since then, Trump has periodically raised the matter, but this week’s back-and-forth is the most significant exchange on the subject to date — just in time for the Iowa Caucuses.

Other GOP presidential candidates have largely sided with Cruz, though Rand Paul said, “it is a concern that people will sue him over not being born in this country.” More important, Cruz has the backing of some of the biggest names in conservative talk radio. Several prominent hosts have circled the wagons around the Texas senator this week, including Mark Levin and Rush Limbaugh.

“Yes, Cruz is eligible to be president; there are no constitutional or legal problems,” tweeted an exasperated Levin. “This is both stupid & boring.”

Even so, Vietor said his experience leads him to believe the Cruz campaign shouldn’t underestimate the staying power of “birther” rumors, if Trump keeps up the insinuations.

“It was easy in the early days to laugh off birthers as crazy or being on the fringe, but when a lie is repeated enough, people start to believe it,” he said. “I realize they have this ‘frenemies’ pact, it’s served them well, but once you start to get down to the last weeks of the campaign, that’s when everything starts getting thrown up against a wall. … If he can raise real questions about Cruz’s legitimacy, that might get stuck in the back of people’s minds.”

Hadas Gold contributed to this report.

