This post has been updated.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Wednesday dismissed his presidential rival Donald Trump’s suggestion that his birth certificate could cause him problems in the 2016 election as “political noise.”
In audio captured by MSNBC, Cruz told reporters outside his campaign bus in Iowa, “As a legal matter, the question is quite straightforward and settled law that the child of a U.S. citizen born abroad is a natural born citizen. People will continue to make political noise about it but as a legal matter it is quite straightforward.”
Though Cruz declined to mention any specific names, Trump told the Washington Post in a Tuesday interview that the Canada-born senator might be ineligible to serve as U.S. president.
“I’d hate to see something like that get in his way,” Trump said. “But a lot of people are talking about it and I know that even some states are looking at it very strongly, the fact that he was born in Canada and he has had a double passport.”
In the U.S., any individual born outside the country who has at least one parent who is an American citizen is considered to be a natural-born citizen.
