A new television ad from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) shows a bunch of professionals in business attire crossing the U.S. border with Mexico illegally, purportedly showing them coming into America to take jobs away from America’s elite.
“I understand that when the mainstream media covers immigration, it doesn’t often see it as an economic issue,” Cruz says, using audio from the mid-November debate in Milwaukee where he made this point, in the ad.
But, I can tell you for millions — of Americans at home watching this, it is a very personal economic issue. And, I will say the politics of it will be very, very different if a bunch of lawyers or bankers were crossing the Rio Grande. Or if a bunch of people with journalism degrees were coming over and driving down the wages in the press. Then, we would see stories about the economic calamity that is befalling our nation.
The ad then cuts to a split-screen of him versus the non-conservative pro-amnesty Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who’s become for now the establishment GOP frontrunner replacing his mentor former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush for that role.
“If I’m elected president, we will triple the border patrol. We will build a wall that works. We will secure the border,” Cruz says, drawing a contrast with Rubio—the former “Gang of Eight” amnesty pitchman for Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
Rubio famously worked alongside not just Schumer but also the now-indicted Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) and Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Michael Bennet (D-CO) as well as Sens. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John McCain (R-AZ) on the amnesty bill.
Cruz, meanwhile, worked against the amnesty bill that Rubio served as Schumer’s pitchman for—fighting it alongside Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), eventually defeating Rubio’s amnesty plan.
WATCH THE AD: