It took all of 24 hours for President Donald Trump to baselessly question the citizenship of the first woman of color on a major party's national ticket. The idea that California-born Democratic vice presidential hopeful Kamala Harris is somehow less American because her parents were immigrants is among the most un-American suggestions imaginable. Not to mention being constitutionally indefensible.

There are awful people in every society, and it was inevitable that a Black woman on the ballot would bring the worst of them out from under their rocks. It was also inevitable that the most openly racist president in modern history would try to capitalize on that poison — though even Trump's most clear-eyed critics were surely surprised at how quickly he swan-dived into the sewer.

Trump's Republican enablers in Congress have, as usual, humiliated themselves with their silence. He, and they, must be made to pay in November for this sickening degradation of American values.

There have been few significant political phenomena in the post-Civil Rights era quite as shameful as the "birther" movement that arose around the election of President Barack Obama. Based on nothing but skin color, racist agitators, quietly encouraged by Republican opportunists, spun an elaborate and utterly false narrative in which Obama was born in Kenya, the home country of his immigrant father, thus disqualifying him from the presidency.

Past presidents built their political bases by demonstrating competence in lower office, or by winning wars; Trump built his by becoming the nation's foremost promoter of this vile conspiracy trope. As such, it must have seemed an easy call for him last week to embrace another.

Rather than disputing provable facts to claim Harris wasn't born here, as they did with Obama, the trolls this time are acknowledging her U.S. birth (in Oakland, on Oct. 20, 1964) — but claim she still isn't eligible, because her parents were immigrants who weren't yet naturalized citizens at the time. They're not just attacking one candidate; they're attacking the entire constitutional concept, affirmed by the 14th Amendment, that people born on American soil are Americans.

A clickbait Newsweek column last week in which a right-wing law professor claims otherwise has been properly dismissed by legal experts across the nation. It is, as Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky puts it, "a truly silly argument."

That didn't stop a Trump campaign operative from falsely calling Harris' eligibility "an open question." Trump himself, in a Thursday news conference, went with his familiar cowardly construct, saying, "I heard it today that she doesn't meet the requirements," but adding that he has "no idea" if that's true.

What faster way to lend credibility to a phony allegation? Enough with these below-gutter tactics. Republican elected officials who align with Trump's sludge deserve the same fate as he hopefully will deserve with a resounding Nov. 3 defeat.

REPRINTED FROM THE ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH

Photo credit: geralt at Pixabay