The Right-Wing Hacks Behind The Harris Smear (UPDATED)

Falsely questioning Sen. Kamala Harris' eligibility to be Vice President because her parents were immigrants has become the right-wing sewer's latest birther tale. In fact, the Senator was born in 1964 in Oakland, CA to legal immigrants, her father then a graduate student at UC Berkeley, and her mother pursuing her PhD. in endocrinology at UC Berkeley. Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and settled law confirm Sen. Harris' status as an American citizen eligible to hold the office of Vice President. Duh.

The smear originated in an article in the sinking Newsweek magazine last week by a right-wing lawyer John Eastman, who teaches at Chapman University, a Disciples of Christ-affiliated school. Chapman ran in the 2010 Republican primary for California Attorney General and lost, with Sen. Harris winning in the general election. So there's that ax to grind. An actual Constitutional scholar, Harvard's Laurence Tribe, called Eastman's claim "vicious and legally baseless b.s."

After bigoted sociopath and corrupt con man Donald "Very Fine People On Both Sides" Trump weaponized the smear in his clown show on Thursday, reaction to his new birther ploy was swift and negative. Even his South Carolina towel boy Sen. Lindsey "Huckleberry" Graham tweeted that Harris was "unequivocally an American citizen," not that we needed his affirmation of the obvious. After three days, and an uprising of their staff and editors, Newsweek was forced to apologize for the smear, which was facilitated by their opinion editor Josh Hammer, a former aide to Sen. Ted Cruz, a member of the right-wing Federalist Society, and a contributor to wingnut Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire mess.

The right-wing media bubble will dirty themselves and their gullible audience with this latest racist nonsense about Sen. Harris. But to the majority of Americans, it won't sell to a public that has their health and economic survival top of mind, and is used to the predictable smears from Trump and his cultists.

UPDATE:  Paul Campos at LGM has a good read on how this racist sausage gets made and distributed.