REPORT: Senator calls out NBC News for ‘selectively omitting’ part of 14th Amendment in Trump interview

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From Fox News: Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah., took NBC News to task for “selectively omitting” a key part of the 14th Amendment in a question about birthright citizenship during an interview with President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday.

Trump was asked about a number of changes he intends to implement once he assumes office during a sit down released on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” including his plan to end birthright citizenship. Under the 14th Amendment, someone born in the U.S. is granted citizenship regardless of whether their parents are citizens. Trump confirmed that he intends to end the policy “on Day One,” calling it “ridiculous.”

NBC host Kristen Welker pushed back, arguing that the 14th Amendment “states all persons in the United States are citizens. Can you get around the 14th Amendment with executive action?” she asked.

Trump said he was open to using executive action, reiterating that the U.S. is “the only country has it” and “we have to end it.”

In a series of posts on X, Lee raked NBC over the coals for deceptively omitting one of the most important parts of the 14th Amendment.  He wrote:

1. @MeetThePress omits six words about birthright citizenship from the 14th Amendment

The omitted text is set off by asterisks: “All persons born … in the United States, *and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,* shall be citizens of the United States”

Those words matter.

2. Congress has the power to define what it means to be born in the United States “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

3. While current law contains no such restriction, Congress could pass a law defining what it means to be born in the United States “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” excluding prospectively from birthright citizenship individuals born in the U.S. to illegal aliens.

4. This is an idea that has attracted lawmakers of both political parties.

5. In fact, one of the first bills (at least in recent memory) that attempted to impose statutory limits on automatic birthright citizenship was introduced in 1993 by then-Senator Harry Reid, a Democrat, who later became the Democrats’ leader in the Senate.

6. Senator Reid’s bill was called the Immigration Stabilization Act of 1993. Title X of that bill would have limited automatic birthright citizenship to children born in the United States to mothers who were either U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents at the time.

7. The fact that federal law doesn’t currently impose such a restriction doesn’t mean that it couldn’t, and that’s why Senator Harry Reid proposed that change.

8. Nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment limits Congress’s ability to enact legislation limiting birthright citizenship along the lines of what Senator Harry Reid proposed in 1993.

9. Those who suggest Congress is somehow powerless to limit birthright citizenship ignore important constitutional text giving Congress power define who among those “born in the United States” is born “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

10. It bothers me that @MeetThePress, long revered as America’s leading Sunday political news program, has become so one-sided.

11. In this instance, @MeetThePress seems to try to render a debatable matter beyond debate by selectively omitting key words from the Constitution, making it appear incorrectly that the Fourteenth Amendment proscribes any and all restrictions on birthright citizenship.

X user Andy Froemel responded, “These words do matter. Subject to the jurisdiction thereof. That never was meant to include illegal immigrants, in the same way the government can ban us from owning machine guns despite the 2nd amendment not mentioning them.”

“Well said,” Lee replied.

Another person, DT Davis, pointed to an analysis on ‘anchor babies’ by commentator and author Ann Coulter back in 2010. Davis wrote:

Unsurprisingly, @AnnCoulter analyzed this issue in depth years ago, including court case history. An indispensable read on the subject.

Highlights of import:
The very author of the citizenship clause, Sen. Jacob Howard of Michigan, expressly said: “This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.”

In the 1884 case Elk v. Wilkins, the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment did not even confer citizenship on Indians — because they were subject to tribal jurisdiction, not U.S. jurisdiction.

https://anncoulter.com/2010/08/04/justice-brennans-footnote-gave-us-anchor-babies1/

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