Donald Trump escalated his attack against Ted Cruz on Wednesday while the Texas senator sought to move past the hits and maintain his status as the favorite to win the Iowa caucuses.
In separate interviews with CNN, Trump and Cruz squared off over the businessman’s comments — reported Tuesday in The Washington Post — that the senator’s birth in Canada could pose a “big problem.” Trump told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that Cruz, whose mother was a U.S. citizen, should go to court and ask a judge to rule that he’s eligible to run for president.
“How do you run against the Democrat, whoever it may be, and you have this hanging over your head if they bring a lawsuit?” Trump said in an interview that aired on “The Situation Room.”
Trump said Cruz should to ask a judge for a “declaratory judgment” that Trump said would protect Cruz against any future questions about his eligibility that could come in a general election.
He also claimed that it was The Washington Post — not him — that raised the issue.
“This was not my suggestion. I didn’t bring this up. A reporter asked me this question,” Trump said. He also repeated his assertion that Cruz has a Canadian passport, which Cruz denied during a separate interview Wednesday with CNN’s Dana Bash.
Trump added: “I’m doing this for the good of Ted … I like him. He likes me.”
For his part, Cruz said he is certain that he never owned a Canadian passport, pushing back sharply on the idea that there is any legal controversy whatsoever.
“Of course not,” Cruz told Bash, as his campaign bus traveled from Sibley to Spirit Lake close to the Iowa-Minnesota border. “Yes, I’m sure. The media, with all due respect, love to engage in silly sideshows. We need to focus on what matters.”
He went on: “The legal issue is straightforward,” he said, calling it a “non-issue.” “Listen, the Constitution and the laws of the United States are straightforward. The very first Congress defined the child of a U.S. citizen born abroad as a natural-born citizen.”
Cruz’s unequivocal answer comes as he is neck-and-neck with Trump in Iowa just weeks before that state’s first-in-the-nation caucuses.
Cruz is in the middle of a six-day, 28-event bus tour, reveling in criticism from most of his fellow GOP rivals at nearly every stop.
Cruz has led Trump in the most recent batch of polling in Iowa. Trump, who at recent events has pondered aloud about the fact that he could lose Iowa to Cruz, has nevertheless recently begun intentionally poking at his faith, nationality, and as of Tuesday, his citizenship.
“I’d hate to see something like that get in his way,” Trump told The Washington Post, saying that Cruz could get tied up in a lawsuit if elected. “But a lot of people are talking about it and I know that even some states are looking at it very strongly, the fact that he was born in Canada and he has had a double passport.”
Cruz has defended himself by pointing to Arizona Sen. John McCain, Mitt Romney’s father George Romney and former Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater as examples of Republican presidential candidates who ran for office even though they were born outside the U.S.