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Constitutional misconstruing reached a new level that Utah Sen. Mike Lee (R) refused to let go unchecked after an interviewer of the president-elect was caught “selectively omitting key words.”

Over the years, proponents of the theory of a “Living Constitution” and contextual butchers alike have readily pulled clauses from the founding document to support causes often wholly unrelated to the intent. During Kristen Welker’s interview with President-elect Donald Trump for NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” the host went a step further when she left words out in defense of birthright citizenship.

Lee shared a clip from the interview where Trump had voiced his favor for putting a stop to the idea of anchor babies where Welker was heard saying, “The Fourteenth Amendment says that ‘All persons born…in the United States…are citizens…’ Can you get around the Fourteenth Amendment with executive action?”

Caption the video courtesy of Libs of TikTok, the senator kicked off a thread by making the point, “@MeetThePress omits six words about birthright citizenship from the 14th Amendment.”

“The omitted text is set off by asterisks: ‘All persons born [or naturalized] in the United States, *and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,* shall be citizens of the United States,’” he wrote before adding, “Those words matter.”

“Congress has the power to define what it means to be born in the United States ‘and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’” the lawmaker detailed as he went on to explain the importance of the omitted language. “While current law contains no such restriction, Congress could pass a law defining what it means to be born in the United States ‘and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’ excluding prospectively from birthright citizenship individuals born in the U.S. to illegal aliens.”

Despite the open border policies embraced by many in the Democratic Party today, including sitting executives across the country voicing their intent to oppose mass deportation efforts from Trump, Lee referenced a bill introduced in 1993 by then-Nevada Sen. Harry Reid, who went on to become the Democratic Senate Leader.

“Senator Reid’s bill was called the Immigration Stabilization Act of 1993. Title X of that bill would have limited automatic birthright citizenship to children born in the United States to mothers who were either U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents at the time,” he continued, making clear there was no restriction preventing such an action now. “Those who suggest Congress is somehow powerless to limit birthright citizenship ignore important constitutional text giving Congress power [to] define who among those ‘born in the United States’ is born ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’”

The “one-sided” behavior of “Meet the Press” was criticized by Lee who chided the program for seeming “to try to render a debatable matter beyond debate by selectively omitting key words from the Constitution, making it appear incorrectly that the Fourteenth Amendment proscribes any and all restrictions on birthright citizenship.”

Elsewhere, the senator slammed Welker for “pure activism” over her line of questioning attempting to goad the president-elect into agreeing to commit to raising the minimum wage, prompting Lee to ask to considerable agreement, “How does anyone buy into the fiction that she’s a journalist?”

Kevin Haggerty
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