Sen. Ted Cruz hit back against Donald Trump’s post-Wisconsin claim that the Texas Senator is merely a “Trojan horse” for the Republican establishment.
“He gets very angry when the voters reject him,” said Cruz. “He likes to yell and scream and insult and curse and his statement last night was consistent with that.”
Cruz won an decisive victory on Tuesday, exceeding polls and projections of how well he would do in the state. In response to the win, Trump released a statement calling Cruz “worse than a puppet” and “a Trojan horse, being used by the party bosses attempting to steal the nomination from Mr. Trump.”
Cruz was asked to respond to Trump’s comments during a Monday press conference.
Cruz responded:
Well, you know Donald can always be counted on to take the high road and to demonstrate class. If he wants to engage in insults he’s welcome to do so. He gets very angry when the voters reject him. He has now lost in four states in a row. He lost a landslide election in Utah, he lost all six delegates that were elected in Colorado, he lost badly in North Dakota and yesterday in Wisconsin, a state that he bragged the day before, the day before yesterday, Donald Trump promised a, quote, big victory in Wisconsin, and not only did he not get a big victory but the men and women of Wisconsin resoundingly rejected his campaign.
Cruz argued that his proposed policies are better than Trump’s platform:
Donald has no solutions to the problems we’re facing … he has no real solutions to bringing jobs back to America. My top priority as president will be bringing jobs back to America, expanding economic opportunity, raising wages for people who are struggling, people in small businesses.
You know today for the first time since they’ve been keeping track of the data, more small businesses go out of business than are formed. Two-thirds of all new jobs come from small businesses. You know when my dad came from Cuba in 1957, he was just 18 years old, he was penniless, had $100 in his underwear and he got a job not too different from this restaurant here. Washing dishes making 50 cents an hour. Now why did he wash dishes? He couldn’t speak English and you didn’t have to speak English to take a dish, put it under hot water and scrub it. It’s people like my dad, the teenage immigrants, people who are struggling, who have been hurt so badly in the Obama/Clinton economy. Those are the people I’m fighting for and the reason Donald lost so resoundingly in Wisconsin is he has no solutions, no answers, for bringing jobs back, for raising wages, and we are running a campaign based on a positive, optimistic, forward-looking conservative agenda to bring jobs and opportunity back to America.
A Marquette University Law School poll released the week leading up to the Wisconsin primary showed Cruz jumping 21 points from 19 percent in February to 40 percent in March. The same poll showed Trump steady at 30 percent. Several other polls released around that time showed Cruz surging into the lead.
The race was first called for Cruz within 20 minutes of the closing of polls. With 100 percent reporting, as of Wednesday Cruz garnered 48.2 percent of the vote while Trump took 35.1 percent and Ohio Gov. John Kasich came in at 14.1 percent.
Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana
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