Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz lambasted fellow GOP candidate Marco Rubio over immigration especially Rubio’s disastrous attempts to enact the so-called “Gang of Eight” bill.
“Border security is national security,” Cruz told Breitbart News in the interview when asked what separates him and Rubio when it comes to national security. “No candidate who has advocated amnesty, who has advocated leaving our border unsecured, who has advocated giving President [Barack] Obama the ability to bring in tens of thousands of Syrian refugees with no background checks can plausibly claim to be an effective leader on national security,” he said.
“An unsecured border and millions coming into this country illegally with the promise of amnesty—with no background checks whatsoever—is fundamentally inconsistent with keeping America safe,” he said. “Each of us in public office makes a choice, makes a choice of where you stand.”
Cruz aimed his fire directly at Rubio’s senate record, specifically his alliance with 4 liberal Democrat Senators and the so-called “Gang of Eight” bill.
“In 2013, the battle of the Gang of Eight was as Reagan would say a ‘time for choosing’ where every member of Congress had the ability to decide ‘who am I and what are my core principles?’” Cruz told Breitbart News. He continued:
A great many of us, including me and including Sen. Rubio, had promised the men and women who elected us that if you sent us to the Senate we would fight tooth and nail against amnesty. In 2013, I made the decision to honor that promise. Sen. Rubio made a different decision. He chose to stand with Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer and the establishment Republicans and push the most massive amnesty program in the history of our country—push legislation that would not secure the border, push legislation that would grant citizenship to over 12 million people here illegally, push legislation that would give President Obama a blank check for admitting Middle Eastern refugees with no background checks. I made a very different decision. I made a decision to stand with Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) with Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and with the American people against amnesty, against leaving our borders unsecured and against driving down the wages for millions of working men and women who have been trapped in economic stagnation for two decades now. That is one major divide.
And Ted Cruz pushed harder on this divide saying Rubio still supports amnesty:
Cruz added, when asked later in the interview with Breitbart News, that Rubio’s views on immigration and support for open borders are outside the mainstream views across the United States.
Rubio, who still supports everything that was in his amnesty bill with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)—the future Democratic leader of the U.S. Senate—backs massive increases in immigration levels to the United States, and still backs citizenship for illegal aliens.
Cruz, meanwhile, doesn’t back amnesty for illegal aliens—he refuses to have any establishment media created debate about what to do with illegal aliens until the border is finally secured, the immigration laws of the nation are enforced and the legal immigration system is back under control—and wants to look out for the average American citizen rather than foreigners when it comes to immigration policy and other policy matters like trade, traditional marriage and more.
“It is not a question of moderation. It is a question of whether you stand with the Washington elites or the working men and women of America,” Cruz said. He continued:
So on the question of amnesty, Sen. Rubio stands with the Washington elites—I stand with the working men and women of America. On TPA and TPP, Sen. Rubio stands with the Washington elites—I stand with the working men and women of America. On marriage—and deeming the Supreme Court’s decision, as Sen. Rubio put it, ‘the law of the land,’—Sen. Rubio stands with the Washington elites and I stand with the men and women of America. I understand that five unelected lawyers have no authority whatsoever to tear down the marriage laws of the United States.
