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Jared Kushner says Trump didn't promote false Kamala Harris birtherism theory

14 August 2020
 Dan Ackermann

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner told "CBS This Morning" on Friday that he does not believe President Trump promoted a baseless claim that Sen. Kamala Harris is ineligible to be vice president.

Driving the news: During a press briefing on Thursday, Trump did not question the veracity of a Newsweek op-ed that inaccurately claimed Harris may be ineligible for the office due to her parents' naturalization status at the time of her birth. Harris is an American citizen and was born in Oakland, Calif.

  • "So I just heard that, I heard it today, that she doesn't meet the requirements. ... I have no idea if that's right, I would have assumed the Democrats would have checked that out before she gets chosen to run for vice president. But that's very serious, they're saying that she wasn't qualified because she wasn't born in this country," Trump said at the briefing.
  • Trump campaign senior adviser Jenna Ellis also shared the op-ed and later called Harris' citizenship "an open question."

Kushner's take: "He just said that he had no idea whether that's right or wrong. I don't see that as promoting it. But look, at the end of the day, that's something that's out there. ... I personally have no reason to believe she's not."

  • "I have not had a chance to discuss this with him, but again, I let his words speak for himself," he said, after being confronted with the fact that Harris was born in California.

Flashback: When pushed by Axios' Jonathan Swan last year to comment on whether Trump's promotion of the birtherism conspiracy theory against Barack Obama was racist, Kushner repeatedly refused.

  • "I wasn't involved in that," he said.
  • "Look, I know who the president is, and I have not seen anything in him that was racist," he added.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.