Less than a week before the midterm elections, President Trump is picking a public fight with the speaker of the House.
On Twitter Wednesday, Trump went off on House Speaker Paul Ryan, saying that he should be focusing on keeping the GOP's majority in the House rather than "giving his opinions on Birthright Citizenship, something he knows nothing about!"
He's referring to the fact that on Tuesday, Ryan said in a radio interview that Trump "obviously" does not have the authority to end birthright citizenship with an executive order, something the president had promised to do hours earlier. Trump also asserted that the "new Republican Majority" in the House will "work on this."
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The president earlier on Wednesday defended his comments about an executive order, saying that "so called-birthright citizenship" will be "ended one way or the other." These promises come despite the fact that Trump reportedly had been warned by his own White House counsel that he probably doesn't have the authority to unilaterally end birthright citizenship, which grants citizenship to any person born in the U.S. But any opportunity to pick a fight with Ryan is one Trump will clearly take, and he now appears to have set himself up to blame the outgoing speaker should Democrats take control of the House next week.
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