Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz charged that President Barack Obama had worsened race relations and been a divisive rather than unifying figure,
Politico reported.
The junior senator from Texas, who is of Cuban heritage, was speaking before the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce in Washington, D.C.
"President Obama, when he was elected, he could have been a unifying figure. He could have chosen to be a leader on race relations and bring us together. And he hasn't done that, he's made decisions that I think have inflamed racial tensions that have divided us rather than bringing us together," Cruz said.
Police in Baltimore used tear gas to enforce an overnight curfew into Thursday morning.
The city has been wracked by riots and protests following the unexplained death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray a week after his April 12 arrest by Baltimore police. Demonstrations have spread to other cities.
Obama took time out of a
Tuesday news conference with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to call for soul-searching. He said there was "no excuse" for lawlessness.
"We have seen too many instances of what appears to be police officers interacting with individuals, primarily African-American, often poor, in ways that raise troubling questions." Obama said. "This has been a slow-rolling crisis. This has been going on for a long time. This is not new, and we shouldn't pretend that it's new."
Cruz described what was happening in Baltimore as "heartbreaking." Gray's death deserved to be "investigated fairly and impartially."
He added: "There's no doubt that there are real and meaningful racial tensions. And you're seeing a city right now that is afraid, that children can't go to school, that men and women are afraid to live their lives."
"It is not beneficial to minority communities to vilify and target law enforcement," Cruz was quoted as saying in
The Washington Post.
Cruz recalled a 2012 speech by
Vice President Joe Biden before a largely African-Americans audience, in which he attacked Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney for promising to unchain the banks.
"[Romney] is going to let the big banks once again write their own rules, unchain Wall Street. He is going to put y'all back in chains," Biden said.
Cruz said that "kind of incendiary and hateful rhetoric," reflected a pattern in the administration of "deliberately dividing and inflaming tensions."
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