GOP presidential candidate and U.S. senator Ted Cruz took part in a town hall meeting sponsored by talk radio station WRKO in Boston and didn't hold anything back when responding to questions from host Jeff Kuhner.
The Texas Republican joked that if he wins the White House, “the first thing I should do is send flowers and a note of condolences to all of the reporters and editors who have checked themselves into therapy.”
Cruz added:
And frankly, the second thing I would do is start planning -- if you’re going to let a Cuban into the White House -- start planning for Dec. 24, 2017, when I guarantee you we will have a pig roast on the South Lawn of the White House.
And I’m pretty confident my dad will be there turning the pig, and it’s going to have a large cigar in its front mouth.
“Let's just say my fantasy comes true,” Kuhner asserted about Cruz emerging victorious in the 2016 presidential election. “We're 19 months from now -- .”
“This is G-rated?” Cruz interjected to laughs from the 600 people in attendance.
“And it’s no longer senator Cruz, but it’s el presidente Cruz, it’s president Cruz,” Kuhner added, which caused the crowd to broke into chants of “USA, USA, USA.”
(The segment quoted here runs from 48:29 to the end of the video.)
“Now you’re in the White House,” the talk radio host continued. “You’re in the Oval Office.” What do you do “regarding illegal immigration and, in particular, what do you do concretely about securing the border? What do you do about employers who hire illegals?”
“And what do you do specifically about the 12 to 20 million illegals in this country?” Kuhner asked. “In other words, would president Cruz give a path to legalization or amnesty for illegal immigrants?”
“Immigration as a very, very important question,” the GOP candidate replied. “I'm optimistic in the long term because I think there's a lot of bipartisan agreement on immigration outside of Washington, D.C.”
Also, “we've got to get serious about securing the borders and stopping illegal immigration,” he added, and “streamline legal immigration so that we don't just welcome it, we celebrate it.”
“As you know, I'm the son of an immigrant who came legally from Cuba 58 years ago seeking the American Dream,” Cruz noted. “If we focus on areas of bipartisan agreement, that's how you actually pass immigration reform legislation.”
Even though Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats had two years in control of the White House and Congress, the president “did nothing, zero on immigration,” Cruz stated. “This isn't about fixing the problem. This is about playing partisan politics in the most cynical crass way. And it's why people are fed up with politicians in Washington.”
As NewsBusters previously reported, all five late night comics wasted no time in mocking Cruz, hitting the Republican candidate as anti-immigrant, regressive and stupid.
One night on the TBS cable TV channel, Conan O'Brien hammered: "[Cruz] pledged to lead America boldly forward into the late 1950s." Regarding the senator's opposition to amnesty, O'Brien noted that Cruz's first commercial was in Spanish and sneered: "Cruz said it's important for me to reach out to the people I'm trying to deport."
In addition, this encounter isn't the first time the Texas Republican clashed with a member of the “mainstream media.”
During a presidential campaign visit to Beaumont, Texas, in May, Cruz became so exasperated with the constant barrage of a reporter's inquiries about homosexuals' rights that he suggested Kevin Steele of KMBT-TV refrain from getting his questions “from MSNBC. They have very few viewers, and they are a radical and extreme partisan outlet.”
The senator also referred to the U.S. Supreme Court's upcoming decision on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage and said Democrats are “so devoted to mandatory gay marriage that they've decided there's no room for religious liberty.”
As a result of that incident, Cruz was cheered for demonstrating how other GOP candidates should deal with reporters, including conservative radio talk show host Mark Levin, who asserted: “The media despises us … they lie about us … and we’re supposed to take it.” Cruz understands this exactly and gave “the perfect answer."
In addition, Bill O'Reilly praised Cruz during a weeknight edition of The O'Reilly Factor on the Fox News Channel for responding to a reporter who “was trying to make a name for himself, so I like what Cruz did."
It's always easy to tell which conservatives and Republicans the liberal reporters fear the most: They constantly slam them, including former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin since they want Democrat Hillary Clinton to be the first female president, and Ted Cruz, who might draw Hispanic voters from the Democrats and help boost the GOP in the 2016 election.
