| CNN | - |
Hanahan,
South Carolina (CNN) Donald Trump escalated his battle with Ted Cruz on
Monday, calling the Texas senator "unstable," threatening a lawsuit and
urging the Republican National Committee to "intervene.
Donald Trump: Ted Cruz is 'unstable'
Story highlights
- Donald Trump continued his bashing of Ted Cruz on Monday, saying he was "dishonest" and stole the Iowa caucuses
- Trump spoke in South Carolina, just days before the primary February 20
Hanahan, South Carolina (CNN)Donald
Trump escalated his battle with Ted Cruz on Monday, calling the Texas
senator "unstable," threatening a lawsuit and urging the Republican
National Committee to "intervene."
"One
of the ways I can fight back is to bring a lawsuit against him relative
to the fact that he was born in Canada and therefore cannot be
President," Donald Trump said in a statement. "If he doesn't take down
his false ads and retract his lies, I will do so immediately.
Additionally, the RNC should intervene and if they don't they are in
default of their pledge to me. "
The
billionaire businessman later held a press conference in which he said
he "never ever met a person that lies more than Ted Cruz."
Trump
continued to heap criticism on Cruz in an interview with CNN's Jim
Sciutto Monday afternoon on "The Lead," saying that with "guys like Ted
Cruz -- it's all talk and no action."
"He's
a very bad guy. He's a very nasty guy. He's got no endorsements from
any senators who he works with. He'll never be able to unify anything,"
Trump said of Cruz.
He
continued: "He can stand in the middle of the Senate floor and let
everybody laugh at him, which is what happened last time, as you know --
he got nothing out of it, zero -- but, you know, that's not the kind of
person who you're going to need to turn the country around."
Trump
acknowledged that his brawl with Cruz might harm the eventual
Republican nominee, whoever it is, "but I think we'll get over it."
The Cruz campaign responded by saying Trump is angrily lashing out "with name-calling and falsehoods."
"To
be fair to Donald, he doesn't know what he actually believes so he
can't really be expected to defend himself with reason and facts," said
Rick Tyler, Communications Director for the Cruz campaign. "He can't be
held to account for his own words because he likely doesn't remember
from one day to the next what he says about anything because he has no
core set of beliefs."
The Trump-Cruz
war is escalating ahead of South Carolina's Republican primary on
Saturday. The two repeatedly clashed during a debate over the weekend
and Cruz released an ad to supporters on Sunday highlighting the
importance of the next president's role in selecting a replacement for
the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
Cruz
isn't backing town, telling reporters earlier Monday that Trump was
aligning with Democrats after he used the debate to blame former
President George W. Bush for trouble in the Middle East.
popular
"When Trump sided with
MoveOn.org and Michael Moore and the fever swamp left-wing, that
demonstrated where he was coming from," Cruz said during a stop in
Aiken, South Carolina.
Trump veered
between his favorite topics at a rally in Mount Pleasant, South
Carolina, earlier Monday, including his plan to build a wall along the
Mexican border. But he repeatedly came back to his criticism of Cruz.
"I've
been in a business where you know, it's pretty sharp. You meet sharp
people, I don't mean sharp like sharp, although they're that also. But
you meet people that really go to the edge," Trump said. "I've never met
people like politicians, they are the most dishonest people I've ever
met ... I think Jeb (Bush) is just Jeb. But this guy Ted Cruz is the
most dishonest person I've ever met in politics."
Trump
also complained that Cruz effectively stole the Iowa caucuses from him
by having staff tell Ben Carson supporters that the retired neurosurgeon
was dropping out of the race -- which was not true.
"He
apologized to Carson after the event, he should have apologized to me,"
Trump said. "If Iowa had any guts, the people from the Republican
Party, they should disqualify him from winning Iowa. I really mean it.
Because what he did was a fraud."
No comments:
Post a Comment