New York Daily News columnist Linda Stasi is upset that Sen. Ted Cruz refers to Donald Trump’s campaign team as “mobsters,” and claimed this week that the pejorative is a racist dog-whistle.
“[A]s an Italian-American, I really, really, really resent that comment because the truth is, every time somebody is bad, they’re immediately mobsters, they’re immediately Italian,” she said this week on MSNBC in an interview that went largely unnoticed until Thursday.
“I have had — that’s a very racist thing to say and that ain’t going to fly here in New York, Teddy Boy,” she added in reference to the senator. “That ain’t going to fly where there’s a lot of them, there’s a lot of Italian-Americans.”
Cruz has criticized Trump’s campaign recently for “dirty tricks,” and even likened the billionaire businessman’s team, which he said includes longtime political operative Roger Stone, to “mobsters.”
Stone drew criticism earlier this year when he said in an interview that he would make public the hotel room numbers of all non-Trump supporting Republican National Convention delegates. He clarified this week that he wasn’t encouraging violence, and said he was merely suggesting Trump supporters should visit delegates to encourage them to sign a pledge vowing to support the casino tycoon.
Still, Cruz alleged this week that the Trump campaign is carrying itself like a mafia crime family.
“The idea that Donald is threatening delegates, we’re seeing this pattern over and over again,” he said in an interview with Glenn Beck. “And Donald Trump’s campaign put out publicly his supporters, the phone number of the state chairman, he has received over 3,000 calls of death threats.”
“Donald needs to understand he is not Michael Corleone. I understand that Donald has had some very shady business deals with people that are currently in prison — mobsters. But presidency should not be Cosa Nostra [an infamous Sicilian crime family],” he added.
Stasi is decidedly unimpressed with the Texas senator’s remarks.
“[W]hat he said, to me, is as racist is what Trump says about Mexicans. Sorry, but it is. You can’t just say that,” she said.
“You cannot say that and if you’re a builder in New York, you can’t even — how — everybody in New York knows somebody that’s in prison or in the mob or something,” she added. “If you’re in the media, if you’re in anywhere, you do. What he said is racist and disgusting.”
The New York Republican primary, which is being fought between Trump, Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, is on April 19.
