Elon Musk as Republican presidential candidate and next Prez?

You cited the quote without understanding where it came from or the purpose of it is, aka textualism and original meaning. I provided two links on the topic. First, the clause of citizen of the United States, in between two commas is specific to those who were living at the time the Constitution was adopted. After that, it is only those born in the US, Territory, US base, etc.

 

Your explanation and arguments have much logic and make sense, but I think there is still a question. It probably boils down to what the framers meant by "at the time of the adoption of this Constitution" and what that phrase modifies; it's ambiguous and reflects the struggles the framers seem to have had with commas.

 

It's all three. He doesn't meet the first criteria.

Didn't you have to pass a Constitution test to matriculate from middle school? I was under the impression all of us did.

 

You have it right, just have to read a bit further. "a citizen at the time the constitution was adopted". Being a new country, there was no one who was natural born at the time of adoption so, there was an allowance early on for non natural born that was only for that generation. The first 9 presidents were not natural born, everyone else since, has been.

 

You left off a curious but important comma after citizen, which might drastically alter the interpretation. (The framers seemed to have trouble with their commas sometimes.)

 

I don't find it to be unclear. There hasn't been a lot litigation on it, but, here is some from Wiki:

Constitutionality of the natural-born-citizen clause[edit]
In 2012, Abdul Karim Hassan filed several unsuccessful lawsuits that claimed the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment had superseded the natural-born-citizen clause; he had argued natural-born citizenship was a form of discrimination based on national origin.[41]

Proposed constitutional amendments[edit]
More than two dozen proposed constitutional amendments have been introduced in Congress to relax the restriction.[42] Two of the more well known were introduced by Representative Jonathan Brewster Bingham in 1974, with the intent to allow German-born Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (otherwise fourth in the line of succession) to become eligible,[43] and the Equal Opportunity to Govern Amendment by Senator Orrin Hatch in 2003, intending to allow eligibility for Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger.[42] The Bingham amendment would have also made clear the eligibility of those born abroad to U.S. parents,[43] while the Hatch one would have allowed those who have been naturalized citizens for twenty years to be eligible.[42]
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And also:

Consistent with the earlier decisions, in 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court stated in its decision in Perkins v. Elg that a person born in the United States and raised in another country was a natural born citizen, and specifically stated that they could "become President of the United States".[62] The case was regarding a young woman, born in New York a year after her father became a naturalized U.S. citizen. However, when she was about four her parents returned to Sweden taking her with them, and they stayed in Sweden. At age 20, she contacted the US-American embassy in Sweden and, shortly after her 21st birthday, returned to the United States on a U.S. passport and was admitted as a U.S. citizen. Years later, while she was still in the United States, her father in Sweden relinquished his United States citizenship, and, because of that, the Department of Labor (then the location of the Immigration & Naturalization Service) declared her a non-citizen and tried to deport her. The young woman filed suit for a declaratory judgment that she was an U.S. citizen by birth. She won at the trial level, and at the circuit court—where she was repeatedly described as "a natural born citizen" [63] — and finally in the U.S. Supreme Court, where the court decision quoted at length from the U.S. Attorney General's opinion in Steinkauler's Case (mentioned in the next section #Government_officials'_interpretations) including the comment that a person born in the United States and raised in another country could yet "become President of the United States".[62]​

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Only one of your examples is pertinent, though I find them all interesting and instructive. I think the Constitution is less than clear (because of the comma placement) and could just as easily be read to say, "No person except [either] a natural born citizen [] or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President" meaning any citizen whether natural born or naturalized can be president. The phrase "after the adoption of the Constitution" is a no-op because nothing in the Constitution applied to anything before it was adopted. Supreme court rulings, while often correct, are sometimes flat out wrong. On the other side I admit the evidence seems pretty strong.​

 

You should know better than that.

 

Wasn't he born in South Africa?

 

Trump's lack of political experience meant that he made no structural changes to the swamp. While he was the best choice in 2016 and he did stop Hillary, I do not expect Trump or Musk to be the best choice in 2024, though they are both immensely valuable.

OUR NEWLY REDPILLED BRETHREN SURE DO ROCK THINGS UP: Elon Musk Wonders Why DOJ Hasn’t Leaked Epstein Client List – And Media Doesn’t Care.

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Righties in this thread not knowing that Musk is ineligible to become POTUS explains so very much.