Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump this week deflected an attack from Sen. Ted Cruz about Trump’s “New York values” by recalling the 9/11 attack and its aftermath in the city.
Cruz said in a radio interview this week that Trump “embodies New York values,” an apparent reference to the billionaire developer’s ties to liberals in America’s biggest city. The attack came after Trump has, for several days, questioned whether Cruz, who was born in Canada, is eligible to run for president.
“When you want to knock New York, you’ve got to go through me,” Trump said Wednesday in an interview with Bloomberg Politics. “New York is an amazing place with amazing people,” he said, conjuring up images of New York on 9/11 and how the city rebounded.
“We took a big hit with the World Trade Center — worst thing ever, worst attack ever in the United States, worse than Pearl Harbor because they attacked civilians,” he said. “They attacked people having breakfast, and frankly if you would’ve been there and if you would’ve lived through that like I did with New York people, the way they handled that attack was one of the most incredible things that anybody has ever seen.”
Cruz was asked Tuesday on Fox News to define what he means by “New York values” but he dodged.
“The rest of the country knows exactly what New York values are,” he said.
Polls show that Trump and Cruz are in a statistical tie to win in the first contest of the primary, the Iowa causes on Feb. 1.
