Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” Republican presidential candidate Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) said “there’s been this disturbing pattern over the last couple weeks” from his rival Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) in which he has, “lied” about Rubio’s record.
Partial transcript as follows:
BASH: Let’s talk about the debate last night, because there were a lot of extraordinary moments. But one specifically was when you turned to Senator Cruz and questioned his ability to speak Spanish. Let’s listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
RUBIO: I don’t know how he knows what I said on Univision because he doesn’t speak Spanish.
And, second of all, the other point that I would make…
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: (SPEAKING SPANISH)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: Senator, were you calling into question whether or not Senator Cruz is a real Latino?
RUBIO: No, I was calling into question whether he even knows what I’m saying. When he — he points to this interview on Univision in which he claims I said something different than what I say in English. He has no idea. He’s just going off what other people are telling him. And it’s false. It’s just not true. And the bottom line is, there’s been this disturbing pattern over the last couple weeks from Ted Cruz of just saying things that are not true. Just in the last week, he’s lied about my marriage — record on marriage. He’s lied about my record on Planned Parenthood. Of course, he lied about Ben Carson in Iowa. But, last night, Donald Trump says he’s issuing robo-calls, doing the same thing to him. And then he also is not telling the truth about immigration. I mean, he goes around portraying himself as this purist, you know, Ted Cruz, the purist on immigration. But I was there two, three years ago, when he was, you know, passionately arguing at the committee that we needed to pass immigration reform, we needed to do bring people out of the shadows, we needed to find a compromise on people that were in this country illegally. And now he portrays himself as this sort of purist who’s never changed his position on the issues. It’s just not true. And I think this pattern of saying things that aren’t true has become very disturbing when it comes to Ted Cruz’s campaign.
BASH: Senator, you used the word lie last night. You just used it many times now. That’s a pretty tough charge. And the rhetoric is really escalating.
RUBIO: Well, there’s no other way to describe that. It’s a lie. When you say something that’s not true, it’s called a lie. That’s the definition of it. Now, I don’t know about every other aspect of his life. I’m not attacking him there. I’m just saying, on this campaign, he is saying things that are not true. And he’s saying it repeatedly. And he knows they’re not true.
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