‘She doesn’t qualify’

President Donald Trump said Thursday he had heard Democratic vice-presidential running mate Kamala Harris was not eligible to serve, stoking a false claim echoing the baseless "birther" theory he promoted about Barack Obama.

At a White House news conference, Trump was asked about "claims circulating on social media" that Harris was not eligible and whether he could say she met the legal requirements for vice president.

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"I heard it today that she doesn't meet the requirements. And, by the way, the lawyer that wrote that piece is a very highly qualified, very talented lawyer. I have no idea if that's right," Trump said.

"I would have assumed the Democrats would have checked that out before she gets chosen to run for vice president," he said.

"But that's a very serious -- you're saying that -- they're saying that she doesn't qualify because she wasn't born in this country."

In his Newsweek op-ed, Chapman University law professor John Eastman claimed some "commentators" said Harris was ineligible as she was not a "natural born citizen" as her parents were not naturalized US citizens at the time of her birth.

Harris was born in California in 1964 to a father from Jamaica and a mother from India. According to the Constitution, any natural born US citizen over the age of 35 is eligible to be president or vice president.

Constitutional law expert Erwin Chemerinsky told CBS News the claim about Harris "is a truly silly argument."

"Under section 1 of the 14th Amendment, anyone born in the United States is a United States citizen. The Supreme Court has held this since the 1890s," the dean of UC Berkeley School of Law said in an email to CBS.

"Some conservatives, such as John Eastman, think that is wrong and being born in the country is not enough," he said. "(They're) clearly wrong under the language of the 14th Amendment and under Supreme Court precedent."