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Comment by jmull | Hacker News Reader

He aspires to be a populist demagogue. I have no doubt he'll be running for president one of these days.

edit: I'm dumb, he can't run for president of the US.

If you mean the US, then he'd either need a consitutional amendment first or for the US to invade South Africa. Which are, considering that we live in the stupidest timeline, not impossible courses of events.

Hah, good point! I'm dumb.

You can't run for President in the US if you were not born in the US, even if you are American.

As long as your mother is American, it doesn’t matter where your born.

This is an incorrect oversimplification of citizenship law and of the natural-born clause.

There are residence requirements for foreign-born US citizens to pass on citizenship to children born abroad, which already contradicts your statement. This applies to mothers and fathers (with a paternity test if not married). Furthermore, it hasn't been legally settled whether someone born a US citizen abroad counts in this clause, though personally I suspect anyone born a US citizen (not just, and not always, children of US mothers) would qualify if challenged.

That's not true, else Ted Cruz wouldn't have been able to run for President in 2016. Cruz was born in Calgary. His mother is an American, father Canadian. The requirement in the Constitution is only that one must be a "natural born citizen".

Cruz's eligibility has always been unsettled, it's just that it never actually became a problem since he suspended his campaign.

He can never be President as he was born in South Africa.

Not just because he was born there, George Romney and McCain were born abroad. The thing is they need to be a "natural born American citizen".

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