Texas Sen. Ted Cruz tells
Newsmax TV his GOP presidential rival, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, is muddying both their records in an attempt to hide his own support for amnesty for illegal immigrants.
Both Cruz and Rubio were elected to the Senate in 2010 promising to fight against amnesty, Cruz told "The Hard Line" host Ed Berliner on Tuesday.
"He and I made the identical promises," Cruz said. "Then in 2013, there was a moment, as Ronald Reagan would put it, that was a time for choosing, that everyone could decide what side of the line they stand on. Marco Rubio made the decision to stand with Barack Obama, with Chuck Schumer, with Hillary Clinton and the Democrats."
Rubio "listened to the big money interest and he co-authored the Gang of Eight, the Rubio-Schumer amnesty bill," Cruz continued, adding that he stood with Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions and Iowa Rep. Steve King against amnesty.
"So while Marco Rubio was leading the fight to pass amnesty, I was leading the fight to defeat amnesty, and we succeeded," Cruz said.
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Rubo admitted in last week's Republican debate that he still supports amnesty now, Cruz said.
"On that stage he said he still advocates a pathway to citizenship for those here illegally," Cruz said. "But secondly, we also had a detailed discussion about the national security dangers in the Rubio-Schumer amnesty bill, in particular, the Rubio-Schumer amnesty bill would have given Barack Obama blanket authority to admit Syrian refugees, tens of thousands of them without mandating any meaningful background checks."
Rubio accuses Cruz of waffling, saying he offered an amendment to the bill and talked up its passage in the media. But Cruz says his amendment was clearly a "poison pill," designed to show the Democrats' hypocrisy.
The Rubio campaign is nervous, Cruz said, because he abandoned his own promises in 2013 in hopes of getting campaign donations.
"That's how they get elected, is they get big checks for supporting amnesty. Now, two years later, they're nervous," Cruz said. "They're regretting having made that decision so they try to run away from it and the classic game that Washington plays is they try to muddy the waters, they try to confuse people, they try to say, if their candidate is going to break the promises to the men and women who elected us, they try to say, well, everybody does it. We're all guilty."
"I introduced an amendment that said anyone here illegally is permanently ineligible for citizenship. What the Rubio campaign is trying to say is well, gosh, by introducing that amendment, it means you supported the legalization and the Gang of Eight," Cruz said. "It's utter nonsense. No, the fact that I was taking out one bad portion of the amendment was not suggesting that I supported the other bad portions of it."
The amendment actually called the Democrats' bluff, he said, "because the Democrats were talking over and over again about how they were concerned about those here illegally, and what it was all about was getting partisan votes for Democrats."