Ted Cruz does not think Donald Trump’s ideas about a national registry of Muslim-Americans is a good idea.
Before speaking at a town hall in Iowa, Cruz reportedly put some distance between himself and Trump’s remarks.
“I’m a big fan of Donald Trump’s, but not a fan of government registries of American citizens,” Cruz reportedly said.
According to the Associated Press, he also noted that the “First Amendment protects religious liberty and I’ve spent the past several decades defending the religious liberty of every American.”
Cruz’s comment comes as he penned an op-ed explaining his desired ban on refugees coming from Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. The senator would allow some exceptions to the refugee ban for certain Christian sects and Yazidis.
“As an unapologetic proponent of legal immigration, it brings me no pleasure to advocate for limiting the flow of refugees to America. But the first duty of our government, which President Obama and Hillary Clinton are ignoring, is to protect the American people,” Cruz wrote in the Washington Times. “The fact of the matter is that no Christian or Yazidi has systematically executed concert-goers while shouting ‘Allahu Akbar.’ Pretending all the refugees are equally likely or unlikely to commit terrorist acts prevents us from helping those we can while protecting ourselves from a real threat. And the insistence of the Obama Administration that the terrorist threat is “not Islamic” gives no confidence that any screening mechanism they would design would actually identify the radical Islamic terrorists whose stated goal is to murder Americans.”
Cruz ranks second in the Washington Examiner‘s GOP presidential power rankings.
