Heidi Cruz says Donald Trump is attacking her husband in an effort to distract from the threat Ted Cruz poses to Trump’s campaign.
“Yeah, so there are a lot of false suggestions out there because I think some candidates are trying to distract from how well Ted’s doing in this election,” she told CNN’s Dana Bash in an interview aired Wednesday, when asked about Trump’s continued mentions of Cruz’s unreported loans from Goldman Sachs and Citibank during his Senate run.
“When you look at the track record, our financial history is public, we’ve put it all out there. And we paid back those loans,” she responded. She also shrugged off questions of Trump’s presidential eligibility because he was born in Canada.
“I don’t think it’s hurt the campaign. I know that this is not a legally disputed issue,” she said. “This has come up many times before, has been settled as to what is a natural-born citizen. Ted perfectly fits that definition, and so I think it’s another example of distractions.”
She also rejected the idea that evangelicals would be siding with Trump over Cruz, even after Liberty University chancellor and president Jerry Falwell, Jr., endorsed Trump.
“If you look at the people who have endorsed Ted Cruz for president, there is no doubt who the evangelical community is supporting,” she said. Cruz received the backing of Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Tuesday.
Heidi Cruz said she wanted to “tell the American people who Ted is … an incredibly thoughtful person, a person who never misses a birthday, who never misses Valentine’s, who reads bedtime stories to his daughters.”
“Even from the Senate floor, and more importantly at home,” she said, alluding to Cruz reading “Green Eggs and Ham” to his daughters from the Senate floor during his 2013 filibuster.
Cruz, she said, is disliked by many of his Senate colleagues because they don’t stand for the same things. “[T]hose that say they dislike him are the very ones that the American people are trying to vote out of office,” she said, adding that in running for the Republican presidential nomination, her husband “is fighting for the American people, and they want him to be unwavering.”
With the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus taking place on Feb. 1, Cruz trails Trump in a RealClearPolitics average of polls, 36.2 percent to 19.3 percent. However in an average of Iowa polls, Cruz is much closer to trump: trailing 27.5 percent to Trump’s 33.2 percent. Cruz ranks second to Trump in the Washington Examiner‘s presidential power rankings.
