Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump defended his decision to suggest that Rafael Cruz, the father of his former rival Sen. Ted Cruz, had ties to the man who killed John F. Kennedy.
“It was a major story in a major publication,” Trump said Wednesday on ABC, referring to a National Enquirer claim that Rafael Cruz was photographed with Lee Harvey Oswald before Kennedy’s killing. “All I did was refer to it.”
Trump cited the Enquirer report to attack the elder Cruz after the Texas senator’s father said that “the destruction of America” could come to pass if Christians failed to back Cruz. “What was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death, before the shooting?” Trump asked on Fox News. “It’s horrible.”
There’s no evidence that Rafael Cruz was with Lee Harvey Oswald, but Trump insisted that he trusts the National Enquirer’s reporting. “I don’t think anybody denied it,” Trump said. “The National Enquirer gave you John Edwards; it gave you O.J. Simpson; it gave you many, many things. I mean, you can’t knock the National Enquirer.”
Cruz’s campaign dismissed the report as a “false” claim in a “tabloid full of garbage” and the senator mocked the allegation. “Yes, my dad killed JFK, he is secretly Elvis, and Jimmy Hoffa is buried in his backyard,” Cruz said in Indiana.
Trump faulted Rafael Cruz for saying things that were “very nasty” in the course of campaigning for his son and denied any wrongdoing in spreading the Enquirer report. “The fact is that it was a cover story on the National enquirer,” he said. “I’m just referring to an article that appeared. It has nothing to do with me.”
