What if Musk ran for president?

AnarchoPlayworker@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 5 points –

This occurred to me the other day and I feel like it’s so crazy that it maybe could happen. Is it too late for him to run in the upcoming election?

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He was not born in the US, and is therefore ineligible for office.

You have to admit though that after all of the Obama birther bullshit, it would perfectly round out the Gaslight Obstruct and Project gameplan.

Also for all their fussing about Obama not being born in the US (even though he was), their guy, John McCain actually wasn't born in the US, but in Panama. McCain was still considered a natural-born citizen because of an act of congress which stated:

And the children of citizens of the United States, that may be born beyond sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born citizens.

Which would also presumably cover Obama even if he wasn't born in the US, since one of his parents is American.

Also Mitt Romney's father was born in Mexico but was allowed to run for president in 1968 for the same reason.

Oh I didn’t know that! Good call.

I used to think it was a bad rule. Now I see.

I guess, I mean there could be value in having an outsider in office, just not him. But I don’t know. It is a little sketch.

Put it this way, should the range of eligible candidates include the world's richest person, or merely the richest person born in America?

Maybe it's like a failsafe rule, to not put the country in danger 🤷.

I think the thought of this rule is to prevent an actual puppet of an enemy country being bankrolled into office by a malicious foreign entity. Obviously he could do it himself. But he'd still probably destroy this county quicker than he destroyed Twitter.

You're talking to a guy who thinks that has probably already happened at least once, so I'm thinking if it at least stops Musk from running then the rule at least had an unintended good side effect.

That said I don't think more billionaires will need to become presidents to kill the country. They nearly succeeded with Jan 6 already.

And that's fair, there are plenty of puppets that were born here. But I guess in the brain of the founders, maybe that was was inconceivable. If that was indeed the intent.

@Gradually_Adjusting Let's be honest, if non-natural born US citizens could be president, there's a non-szero chance we would have seen President Schwarzenegger more than decade ago.
I love Arrnie, fon't get me wrong, but electing popular figures rarely goes well (lloking at you, Reagan)

@anarchoplayworker

Not strictly necessary. If his parents were US citizens--and they aren't--then it wouldn't matter where he was born. Kind of. I think that there might be residency requirements for children of US citizens that are born abroad, e.g., if your parents are expats and you live all your life in another country, you might not be a citizen, but it's complicated. You'd def. want to contact an immigration attorney if that was the case.

BUT...!

The point is that Musk, since he wasn't born to US citizens, and since he wasn't born in the US, isn't eligible to run for president.

It's an open question as to what happens if he ran anyways, and how votes would be tabulated, etc. It would get messy, but I don't think that it's ever happened that someone ineligible has run for president and won any significant amount of the vote.

Thank the lord for him not being able to run