Reid fires back at Trump over birthright citizenship stance

Retired Nevada Democratic senator Harry Reid said on Wednesday that President Donald Trump “can tweet whatever he wants while he sits around watching TV, but he is profoundly wrong” about revoking birthright citizenship. | AP Photo/Scott Sonner, File

Harry Reid on Wednesday said Donald Trump is “profoundly wrong” after the president quoted his 1993 position on revoking birthright citizenship in perhaps his harshest criticism of the president since leaving office.

The retired Nevada Democratic senator said in a statement that “around the time Donald Trump was gobbling up tax-free inheritance money from his wealthy father and driving several companies into bankruptcy, I made a mistake” by proposing a bill to remove birthright citizenship from immigrants who entered the country illegally. In a speech on the Senate floor 25 years ago, Reid said “no sane country” would offer a “reward for being an illegal immigrant

Referring to that speech, Trump said Reid was correct “before he and the Democrats went insane and started with the Open Borders (which brings massive Crime) ‘stuff.'” And after fighting with Trump all through his election campaign, Reid fired back on Wednesday that Trump “can tweet whatever he wants while he sits around watching TV, but he is profoundly wrong.”

“After I proposed that awful bill, my wife Landra immediately sat me down and said, ‘Harry, what are you doing, don’t you know that my father is an immigrant?’ She set me straight. And in my 36 years in Washington, there is no more valuable lesson I learned than the strength and power of immigrants and no issue I worked harder on than fixing our broken immigration system,” said Reid, a former Senate majority and minority leader. “Immigrants are the lifeblood of our nation. They are our power and our strength. This president wants to destroy not build, to stoke hatred instead of unify.”

Shortly after Reid’s response went public, Trump tweeted a link to the video of Reid’s 1993 remarks and attacked the retired senator, who has been battling cancer.

“Harry Reid, when he was sane, agreed with us on Birthright Citizenship!” Trump said.

In an interview published Tuesday, Trump proposed revoking birthright citizenship through executive action, a move most legal scholars say is impossible. A number of Republicans, however, say that they would consider legislation intended to curb the practice of people entering the country illegally and having children here that become citizens.

Source:Politico.com