The day after a well-received debate performance that involved a contentious exchange with rival Marco Rubio about immigration, Texas senator Ted Cruz joined Fox News’s Bret Baier and faced some difficult questions about his own murky position. The interview, aired live on Fox Wednesday night, showed a flustered Cruz attempting to reconcile his tough talk against amnesty for illegal immigrants with his past statements in support of a path to legal status.
Watch an excerpt from the interview below:
Here’s some context: In Las Vegas Tuesday, Rubio was asked to explain if he still supported a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants after backing away from his 2013 comprehensive immigration reform. The Florida senator eventually admitted that, after securing the border and a significant waiting period, he would still support a pathway for otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants to receive green-cards. Cruz took advantage of the discussion on Rubio’s greatest weakness to posit that he had been “leading the fight against amnesty” during 2013.
Rubio pushed back with a line of attack he’s been using on the campaign trail recently; that Cruz’s position is not that much different than his own. Cruz, Rubio argues, supported a path to legalization, if not citizenship, during 2013. Cruz has said he does not support amnesty but in Las Vegas, when pressed on his support for legalization, hedged ever so slightly.
“I have never supported legalization, and I do not intend to support legalization,” Cruz said.
As many journalists have pointed out before Tuesday’s debate and since, this isn’t entirely accurate. Cruz did support an amendment to Gang of Eight that would have allowed for a path to legal status—an improvement, Cruz argued then and now, over the bill’s path to citizenship. But Cruz also spoke at the time about his desire to pass the bill and that his amendment could help pass it through the Republican-led House.
“I don’t want immigration reform to fail. I want immigration reform to pass,” Cruz said in a Senate hearing in 2013.
“The amendment that I introduced removed the path to citizenship, but it did not change the underlying work permit from the Gang of Eight,” Cruz said around the same time, according to the Texas Tribune.
In the Wednesday interview, Baier pressed Cruz to explain why he touted his legalization amendment as “the compromise that can pass.”
“It sounds like you wanted the bill to pass,” Baier said.
“Of course I wanted the bill to pass,” Cruz said, before correcting himself. “My amendment to pass.” Cruz went on to say that just because he introduced his amendment doesn’t mean he supported the “other aspects of the bill.” He characterized his amendment as a “poison pill,” meant to demonstrate the supporters of the overall bill were not serious about passing something that did not include a path to citizenship. Cruz noted to Baier that Alabama senator Jeff Sessions, a staunch opponent of a path to citizenship and legal status, supported his amendment. “Is anyone remotely suggesting that Jeff Sessions supports amnesty? Of course not,” Cruz said.
Baier pointed out that while Cruz is claiming his amendment was a poison pill, he was claiming otherwise in the press in 2013. Cruz maintained that his amendment “illustrated the hypocrisy of the Democrats” and “succeeded in defeating the Rubio-Schumer amnesty bill.”
Rubio’s leadership on Gang of Eight may be enough to sink him in the Republican primary, and there’s nothing he can do to get to the right of Cruz on the issue of immigration. What he can do, and what he’s been consistently trying to do, is turn the issue around on Cruz. Rubio may have the wrong position on immigration, they seem to be saying, but Cruz can’t be trusted to tell you what his real position is.
Cruz seemed to have the upper hand in Tuesday’s exchange by virtue of his lead over Rubio in the polls. But Wednesday’s interview demonstrates how Cruz’s effort to obscure his own position may come back to bite him.
