A TV ad being released in Wisconsin ahead of its Tuesday primary that criticizes Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's positions on Syrian refugees and amnesty is misleading, according to a
Washington Post fact-check.
A woman featured in the ad begins saying, "Sure, I get some grief when I say I'm voting for Donald Trump. But you know what? I want to protect my family."
She then cites the terrorist attacks in Paris last November, in San Bernardino, Calif., last December, and in Brussels last month, saying: "I want a president that will keep us safe, who will control our borders and stop letting in dangerous people. Trump will do that."
She ends by saying Cruz wanted to accept more Syrian refugees into the country and expand amnesty for undocumented immigrants, and comments: "That won't protect my family."
The ad from the pro-Trump Great America PAC garnered "two Pinocchios" from fact-checkers, which means it contained "significant omissions and/or exaggerations," the Post reports.
But Great America PAC spokesman Jesse Benton defended the content.
"Cruz is entitled to change his mind, as are we all," he tells the Post. "But Cruz is a bit of a special case because he makes consistency and adherence to principle a core of his whole political raison d'etre."
The Post reports in 2014, Cruz supported allowing Syrian refugees into the United States. But after the Paris attacks, he introduced measures banning U.S. entry for refugees from Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and any other country with territories controlled by a terrorist organization.
Benton accused Cruz of a "convenient political flip-flop" on the matter.
"The ad does not say when he supported it, just that he did, which is factually unassailable," Benton tells the fact-checker.
On the issue of amnesty,
Benton explained Cruz reportedly helped write President George W. Bush's immigration policy, which included a pathway to legal status but not automatic amnesty.
Benton also pointed to Cruz's role in the debate over the 2013 comprehensive immigration reform bill, introducing five amendments, including one that would expand legal immigration.
Cruz now says he never supported legalization and that he introduced the amendments only as a
"poison pill" that would kill the bill.