Conservative WSJ appalled by Trump's birthright citizenship stunt: 'Did Michael Cohen give him this legal advice?'

The conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page on Tuesday published a scathing editorial that denounced President Donald Trump for declaring that he will unilaterally reinterpret the 14th Amendment through an executive order.

The editorial begins by lamenting that Trump has squandered any potential momentum he'd build since the contentious hearings surrounding Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. It then says that by claiming the authority to rewrite the Constitution through executive fiat, "Trump has driven into his own constitutional ditch."

The Journal concedes that Trump has had success in campaigning against undocumented immigrants, but it says that going after birthright citizenship puts him on a completely different -- and more politically perilous -- playing field.

"The birth citizenship gambit puts Mr. Trump on the wrong side of immigration law and politics," the editors write. "Did Michael Cohen give him this legal advice?"

The Journal then explains why Trump can't even rely on the conservative Supreme Court to uphold his executive order should he ever issue it.

"Trump may imagine the current Supreme Court would rule differently," the editors write. "We doubt it. Justices who consider themselves loyal to the Constitution’s plain text would have a hard time reading the word 'allegiance,' with all its ambiguity, into the Fourteenth Amendment. "

Read the whole editorial here.