Republican presidential candidate Sen. [crscore]Ted Cruz[/crscore] on Sunday played defense and doubled down on his criticism of Donald Trump’s “New York values,” which he characterizes as non-conservative.
“It is amusing seeing the media elite in New York and D.C. run around with their hair on fire at wondering what on earth are New York values,” Cruz told host Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.” “In the rest of the country people understand exactly what that is.”
Cruz argued that liberal “New York values” were formulated by Donald Trump himself, noting a 1999 “Meet the Press” interview with Tim Russert in which Trump said he was “very pro-choice” and cited his “New York background.” The Texas senator tweeted the video Saturday:
Even Donald Trump himself says #NewYorkValues are different from the values in Iowa and across the country: https://t.co/nieroSPHxg
— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) January 16, 2016
“He explained that his views were that he was very pro-choice, he supported partial birth abortion, he was open to gay marriage, and his explanation for that, he said ‘I’m a New Yorker, I’m from Manhattan. Those are the views of New York. Those are what New York values are,'” Cruz said of Trump. “They’re not Iowa values, but that’s New York values. So that was Donald’s own explanation of what New York values are. It’s how he articulated it.”
“It strikes me as curious now that he has displayed such outrage that anyone would even acknowledge that there is a particular political view — and I would point out it’s a view echoed by far left liberal Democratic politicians like Andrew Cuomo, like Bill de Blasio, like Hillary Clinton — and Donald Trump has supported those candidates and supported their positions on a lot of issues,” Cruz said.
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