Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) took a shot at The Wall Street Journal editorial board for what he described as it’s support for his opponent, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL).
According to Cruz, The Wall Street Journal editorial board is a “potent tool” for Republican leadership that he has often gone against and that’s why he is often a target of it.
“Listen, Joe, there is no one — no conservatives in America who think The Wall Street Journal is the voice of conservatism,” Cruz said. “I wrote a book this summer. The opening chapter talks about how to Washington cartel, the career politicians in both parties, get in bed with the lobbyists and the special interests — how they work. And the way Republican leadership punishes anyone who stands up to the cartel is they engage in public flagellation, as I describe in that opening chapter, ‘Mendacity.’ The most potent tool they have is The Wall Street Journal editorial board and anytime Republican leadership is mad at you, with me that’s quite often — you can set a stopwatch and within 72 hours the Journal hits you and they usually hit you twice. And the Journal, listen, the Journal’s hobby course is they love amnesty. They are focused obsessively on amnesty and the Journal is supporting Marco Rubio — they’re not explicitly.”
Cruz then went into detail with host Joe Scarborough about how he saw The Wall Street Journal’s push for Rubio as being tied to its desire for immigration reform that includes some form of amnesty for illegal immigrants in the country.
“For the next three months, the Journal should change their header to the ‘Marco Rubio for president newspaper’ because their attacks — it’s going to keep coming because Marco fights for the principles they care about. Marco joined with Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama,” Cruz said. “Let’s rewind. When Marco ran for senate in Florida he told the men and women of Florida just like I told the men and women of Texas if you elect me, I’ll lead the fight against amnesty. Now some of your viewers may not agree with that, but both of us told our voters that’s what we would do. When we got to Washington we made different choices. He made the choice to stand with Chuck Schumer and Barack Obama and not only lead the fight against amnesty but offer a massive amnesty bill that among other things — you want to talk about national security? The Rubio-Schumer amnesty bill would have dramatically expanded President Obama’s authority to admit Syrian refugees with no background checks whatsoever. Now that is a serious threat to our nationally security.”
“On the other hand, I made the decision to stand with Jeff Sessions and Steve King and lead the fight against amnesty and we defeated it in Congress,” he added. “We both decided to do different things. I honored the promises and Marco did not.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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