Ted Cruz attempted to break the ice at the seventh Republican presidential debate with rude claims that offended all of the GOP candidates, himself included.
In a referrence to Donald Trump, Cruz was asked to discuss “the elephant not in the room” and his thoughts on Trump’s decision to boycott the debate.
Cruz responded to the question by talking about the message that Trump’s absence at the debate sends to voters before breaking into an impersonation of the man himself.
Cruz stated:
“Now, secondly, let me say I’m a maniac and everyone on this stage is stupid, fat, and ugly.”
He then offered a personal insult to retired neurosurgeon and fellow GOP candidate Ben Carson by stating, “Ben, you’re a terrible surgeon,” as Carson laughed on awkwardly.
Cruz tried to move on by making a blatant dig at Trump and said that “the Donald Trump portion” of the debate was now “out of the way” since the absurd and offensive claims had been made.
Despite the low blow that Cruz made his attitude towards Trump quickly seemed to change when he was pressed by Kelly.
Kelly asked Cruz about his change of tone and he stated that he has “not insulted Donald personally” and that he does not “intend to,” before going on to offer Trump praise on what he called the “enthusiasm” that Trump has managed to generate.
Cruz made it clear he would not turn the debate into a slanging match and told Kelly that he believed “policy and vision and record should be the meat of politics” and that’s where he was “going to focus.”
The debate moved on to discuss more important issues such as national security, immigration, healthcare, and reproductive rights.
These topics were widely tweeted about during the debate, as were Cruz’s claims from his Trump impersonation in the first half of the debate.
Image by DonkeyHotey via Flickr under this Creative Commons License.
