Trump: Cruz's Canadian birth could be a 'big problem'

It feels a bit like déjà vu: Instead of challenging President Obama on his birthplace, Donald Trump is now questioning whether Canadian-born Ted Cruz can be president.

During an interview with The Washington Post, Trump said if his fellow Republican presidential candidate becomes the nominee, he could find himself "tied up in court" for years. "That'd be a big problem," he said. "It'd be a very precarious one for Republicans because he'd be running and the courts may take a long time to decide. You don't want to be running and have that kind of thing over your head." Cruz was born in Calgary in 1970, and his mother was a U.S. citizen; under the U.S. Constitution, the president must be a "natural-born citizen," and anyone born to a U.S. citizen is granted citizenship regardless of where the birth occurs.

Of course, Trump said, he's not the one talking about the validity of a Cruz presidency. "People are bringing it up," he said. Trump would "hate to see something like that get in his way," but he knows that "some states are looking at it very strongly, the fact that he was born in Canada and he has had a double passport." Trump made his comments before a rally Monday in Iowa, a state where polls are showing Cruz closing in on frontrunner Trump.

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