uh this is actually a story of an event that that more or less happened last week it it hit the New York Times and all the other media last week but um you know it's it's still going on I mean you know I thought it was just gonna like that but right-wing radio is and and you know right-wing Publications are still all over this here's here's what's going on the uh the Constitution says no person excepted natural-born citizen shall be eligible comma or a citizen of the United States at the time of adoption of this constitution comma shall be eligible to the office of president now the reason why that second part of the sentence was in there in other words uh only a natural-born citizen can be president but if you are actually a citizen at the time of the adoption of the Constitution uh then you can become president um the reason that they put that in there was because George Washington's parents were British citizens and they wanted to make him President John Adams parents were British citizens and they wanted to make him president Thomas Jefferson's I mean these were our first three presidents uh in fact you the same is true of Madison and Monroe the first five presidents all of them their parents were British citizens and so they were not natural born citizens by the definition of that time according to the repu this Republican group which is you know doing this literal read of the Constitution and they you know their argument actually seems relatively cogent this is the national Federation of Republican assemblies nfra and the argument that they're making is that your parents must be citizens when you are born for you to be a quote natural born citizen and the only exception was for those first five presidents and that exception is actually in the Constitution now you know they tried this with Obama although Trump his birther thing saying that Obama wasn't even a citizen much less natural born kind of you know trumped pardon the pun uh that whole argument kind of you know so it just kind of got lost back in 2008 but this Republican group is reprising this argument and they're taking it a step further because at the time that kamla Harris was born apparently both her mother and her father were not yet naturalized US citizens they were here on green cards and so they're saying she's not a natural born citizen according to the Constitution so that's their first argument then their second argument is that even if she were it doesn't matter because her father was black and black people can never be citizens because of the Dread Scott Decision which was never repealed by the Supreme Court now Dread Scott was an African-American who uh lived uh I I believe he started in Missouri I'd have to go back and look but um he was enslaved uh and his owner was a guy who was in the US Army his owner took him to Minnesota which was a free state where Dread Scott became free he continued to work for his owner they apparently had a very good relationship in fact uh you know there's there's some speculate that his owner the guy who owned him I'm for I don't have his name um actually helped finance the five lawsuits that Dread Scott Mr Scott used he had three state lawsuits and two Federal lawsuits that took it all the way to the Supreme Court right to say that hey I was freed in Minnesota but when they went back to Missouri the Army sent them back to Missouri Missouri said Oh no you're a slave again and that was that produced dread Scot's lawsuit and in that decision chief justice Roger tnie wrote and it was a 7 to2 decision uh wrote that basically no black person can ever be a citizen of the United States and so this Republican group nfra The National Republican Federation the national what is it national National Federation of Republican assemblies this group says that because of Dread Scott camela kamla Harris also is not a citizen of the United States or at least a natural born citizen because her father could not have been a citizen because he was black and and they I mean they're literally quoting Dread Scott they go on to say this this was you know what they on their on their platform page on their website an originalist and strict constructionist understanding of the constitution in the Scalia and Thomas tradition as well as precedent setting US Supreme Court cases below and one of the ones that they cite is Dread Scott have found that a natural born citizen is defined as a person born on American soil of parents who are both citizens of the United States the time of the child's birth and then they quote Dread Scott The Dread Scott decision and this is what chief justice Roger tnie wrote he wrote the question is simply this can a negro whose ancestors were imported into this country and sold as slaves become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States and as such become entitled to the rights and privileges and immunities guaranteed by that instrument to that citizen or to the citizen the Ian is excluded because being for born in a foreign country he cannot be a member of the community until he is naturalized but why are the African Rays born in the state not permitted to share in one of the highest duties of the citizen the answer is obvious he is not by the institutions and laws of the state numbered among its people he forms no part of the sovereignty of the state and is not therefore called upon to uphold and defend it end of quote so this is The Dread Scott Decision 1857 saying that black people are not citizens of the United States never can be now you could argue that that decision was repealed by the 13th Amendment and the and the 14th Amendment section two of the 14th Amendment which does blows up the three fist provision um but the na the national Federation of Republican assemblies is is saying oh no no Dread Scott is still on the books guys and I mean and they got some serious people people you know at least in the Republican Party talking about this Laura lomer you know former Republican primary candidate for US Congress a former formerly associated with the Trump campaign uh she laid out an extensive rant over on Twitter about common Mother's immigration status and then you know quoting and then the New York Times I had an article titled Trump elevates false Fringe attacks on Harris to center of his campaign these comment their comments seemingly aimed at suggesting to Black voters that the Democratic candidate does not represent them and more broadly planting the idea that M Harris is inauthentic helped turn what had been a trickle of such content into a gusher overnight conservative corners of the internet long fixated on Mr Biden's age swung to what looked to be their next Target years old video clips of M Miss Harris acknowledging her South Asian Heritage found fresh currency along with memes mocking her speaking style and even a Billy Joel song modified to say she's not black or white Indian or Jamaican so here we have Senator ran Paul is you know an endorser of this Rafael Cruz is the president of this group this is Ted Cruz's dad I mean his people are not without some juice right uh you know people are saying ah this is just a fringe group well you know they they used to think that Tim McVey was a member of a fringe group grp Tim McVey was you know traveled around the country for a year or two talking about the great replacement Theory and everybody said ah he's just crazy until he blew up the building you know the federal building in Oklahoma City and then guess what happened his great replacement Theory became Republican Doctrine I mean it's at the core of the Trump Advance call for more white babies because you know those Jews are are paying to uh caus black people to reproduce in large numbers and uh and they're and they're importing brown people from other countries I mean you can laugh at it if you want and it is you know this a this is a fringe group it's not part of the official Republican party but they you know but they claim you know they call themselves Republicans and there's a bunch of Republican officials you know former Republican officials in there including you know former people who've held fairly High office in the United States and you know you got Mike Huckabee kellyanne Conway Rafael Cruz Rand Paul Michelle Bachmann Pat Buchanan Steve Forbes Alan Keys Ken Blackwell you know but serious people who are endorsing this group or are members of this group or in the case of Raphael Cruz Rafael Cruz even you know run this group saying these things and this is why I think it's so important that we just repudiate just openly explicitly repudiate this Embrace of racism that has animated the Republican party ever since the Richard Nixon rolled out his white silent majority riff and his War on Drugs to go against black people and hippies back in the day what say you I got to tell you about what happened in Arlington National Cemetery this week we'll be right back stay tuned