Donald Trump’s own administration is throwing his wife under the bus. On Tuesday, Ken Cuccinelli, the acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), suggested that anyone who was not physically born in the United States should have “no right” to become a U.S. citizen – this includes Trump’s own wife Melania Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
Cuccinelli, the xenophobic former Republican attorney general of Virginia, was interviewed on NPR’s Morning Edition and was asked to discuss the administration’s new public charge policy, which discriminates against legal immigrants deemed likely to need public assistance based on their health and monetary needs.
Cuccinelli told NPR that immigration is a “privilege” for those “who can stand on their own two feet.”
“No one has a right to become an American who isn’t born here as an American,” he said.
When pressed on the point, Cuccinelli, who once compared immigrants to rats in a 2012 radio interview, reiterated, “It is a privilege to become an American, not a right, for anyone who is not already an American citizen.”
Trump claims to hire the best people and apparently, in his eyes, the best people want his wife deported. Oh, the irony.
You can listen to the interview below:
