Texas Senator and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz repeated references he heard to the Iran nuclear deal as the “the jihadist stimulus deal” and said “If this deal goes through, the Obama administration will become the leading financier of terrorism against America in the world” on Wednesday’s “Kelly File” on the Fox News Channel.
Cruz said, “It’s interesting, Prime Minister Netanyahu put out a statement today that said this was a catastrophic mistake and he said the one person who’s telling the truth is the president of Iran, Rouhani, who said, [paraphrasing] ‘We got everything we wanted.’ This deal ensures that Iran, either, number one, will acquire nuclear weapons, or, number two, will necessitate military action from the United States or Israel. In addition to that, if this deal goes through, and I hope that Congress steps up and stops it, billions of dollars will flow from the United States of America to Iran, the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world. That money will be spent by jihadist terrorists to murder Americans, to murder Israelis, to murder Europeans. If this deal goes through, the Obama administration will become the leading financier of terrorism against America in the world. This is — I’ve heard this referred to before as the jihadist stimulus bill.”
Earlier he stated that Major Garrett’s question to President Obama about Americans being held in Iran “It was absolutely a fair question. And I’ll tell you what was nonsense is the president’s answer. There are four American hostages in Iran, held for professing their Christian faith, held for — one journalist exercising his First Amendment rights. And, in the entire course of President Obama and John Kerry and the administration popping champagne and celebrating this deal with Iran, they did nothing to free those imprisoned Americans. It was one of the many shameful aspects of this catastrophic Iran deal.
The discussion then turned to the Planned Parenthood video showing one of their officials discussing the sail of fetal organs, Cruz said, “These tapings of Planned Parenthood selling body parts are grotesque. It highlights the evil of what they’re doing.” He added, “there needs to be a criminal investigation. There are at least three federal laws that are potentially violated. One, selling the body parts of unborn children for profits, number two, for any transfer of tissue there has to be written consent from the mother. And number three, under federal law you cannot change the method of abortion if you’re trying to get tissue. In that tape, you see they’re discussing different methods to capture. And so I’m calling on the US Department of Justice to investigate has a federal law been violated and I’m calling on state officials, in any location where Planned Parenthood exists, for state district attorneys, state attorneys general, to investigate criminal conduct.”
Curz also said, “I serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee, I believe the Judiciary Committee will hold oversight hearings to get to the bottom of what they did. And I’ll tell you right now, I chair the Oversight Federal Rights and Federal Courts subcommittee. And if the full committee doesn’t hold hearings, I intend to hold hearings to get to the bottom of what appear to be barbaric practices being carried out by Planned Parenthood.”
Cruz also commented on his meeting with Donald Trump, Cruz said the two are “friends” and have met before. He added, “I like Donald, because he’s brash, he’s bold, and he speaks the truth. He stands up to Washington. It’s what I’ve tried to do in my time of public office. And people are fed up with politicians, they’re fed up with what I call the Washington cartel. Career politicians, Republicans and Democrats, who get in bed with the lobbyists and special interests and I, in particular, salute Donald Trump for focusing on the problem of illegal immigration.”
He added that Trump “speaks in colorful terms, he doesn’t speak the way you or I speak. But an awful lot of Republican 2016 candidates went out of their way to beat him with a stick. And I’m not going to join them. I’m not going to join them, because I salute him for shining a light on the problem of illegal immigration, on the safety issues, on sanctuary cities.”
Cruz concluded by talking about his dispute over his exclusion from the New York Times’ bestseller list, Cruz said of the Times, “they don’t want people to read the book ‘A Time for Truth.’ They left it off, and then an amazing thing happened. Number one, they accuse me of bulk sales. I said that’s a lie, either produce your evidence or apologize. Then my publisher, HarperCollins, came out and said that’s a lie, we have all the sales data, there are no bulk purchases. But then Amazon and Barns & Noble both came out and said that’s a lie. So, I’m glad the New York Times listed it. I appreciate their listing it. But it seems to me there are a lot of conservative authors the New York Times discriminates against. There is a need for the public editor the New York Times to investigate their methodology. They leveled a false charge at me that has been refuted publicly. And if the New York Times — if they want to be credible journalists, the public editor needs to investigate their methodology, and see if they’re discriminating against authors that they may have different political views from.”
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