On Tuesday morning, the news broke that President Trump wants to issue an executive order that will end birthright citizenship in America—in other words, that babies born in America to non-citizens or undocumented immigrants will no longer be granted U.S. citizenship.
“We’re the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States... with all of those benefits... It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. And it has to end,” Trump said in an interview clip from the show Axios on HBO.
Trump, however, doesn’t appear to have the authority to override the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
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On Tuesday night, Late Show host Stephen Colbert addressed Trump’s latest xenophobia play ahead of the midterms.
“Now, our fearmonger-in-chief, the Great Pumpkin if you will, it’s Halloween, a spooky time of year, and he knows how to stoke the fear,” said Colbert. “He knows how to appeal to the Latinophobic—the Hispanickers, if you will. So this morning, Trump revealed that he was planning an executive order to end birthright citizenship.”
“Anyway, it’s in the 14th Amendment, and it’s been reaffirmed multiple times by the Supreme Court over the last 150 years. But Trump says that his executive order has more legal authority than the 14th Amendment,” Colbert continued. “What do you call a man, a leader of a country, who thinks that what he dictates is more important than the Constitution? He’s a dick... wait… what’s that word? I’ll think of it… He’s a dick.”
Later on, Colbert invited House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi onto the couch and asked her about Trump’s latest threat.
“Well, this is just more of the same of what he’s been saying—taking babies out of the arms of their moms, putting them in cages, warning about a caravan that’s over a thousand miles away, putting troops on the border that are more people than will ever reach our border in the caravan. It’s just another in that,” Pelosi told Colbert. “What he’s saying today has no relationship to what his authority is, but that’s of course not unusual.”
