Christian Smith
(NewsNation) – Veteran political commentator and author Ann Coulter says calling former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy an “Indian” was not racist. Coulter defended her comment on “Dan Abrams Live” on Thursday.
“I agreed with many, many things you said…probably more than most of the other candidates when you were running for president,” Coulter told Ramaswamy on his podcast called The truth. “But I still wouldn’t have voted for you because you’re Indian.”
Ramaswamy, a multimillionaire who ran for the Republican presidential nomination, was born in Ohio to immigrants from India.
“I disagree with her, but I respect the fact that she has the courage to speak her mind,” he wrote in X after Coulter’s appearance. Coulter, however, said his words to Ramaswamy reflected a long-held opinion.
“I’ve said it a million times. I think immigrants can wait a few generations before they tell us what to do. I’m just talking about president,” she told Dan Abrams.
“It’s not racist,” she continued. “Black people have been here longer than most white people. It has nothing to do with race. It has to do with being a citizen for at least three generations. I think that’s a good rule.”
There is no law or rule in the US about how many generations a family must live in the US before someone can run for president or any other office.
“There’s a reason the founders wanted the president to be a natural — which Ted Cruz is not,” Coulter said. “President is different from any other position. I told him (Ramaswamy) that he could be secretary of state, be a Supreme Court judge, be a governor. But President, I think we have to wait for the third generation.”
Coulter’s comment about Texas Sen. Ted Cruz renews an argument made when he ran for president in 2016. Cruz was born in Canada to a Cuban father and an American mother.
People born outside the US to at least one American parent are considered US citizens. It is generally held that someone born outside the US to at least one American parent is eligible to run for president, but this has never been challenged in court.
The issue has come up during at least three previous presidential campaigns, most recently with Senator John McCain. The Arizona Republican was born in 1936 in the Panama Canal zone. Michigan Governor George Romney, Republican candidate in 1968, was born in Mexico to American parents. And Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who was the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 1964, was born in what was then Arizona Territory in 1909.
