Texas Sen. Ted Cruz during a MSNBC town hall on Thursday doubled down on an accusation that Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell lied to him, all the while insisting that he would work well with DC legislators.
“Every word I said there is true and accurate. No one disputed a word I said,” he told the audience in Buffalo, New York of his scathing floor speech condemning his party’s Senate leader over controversial Export-Import bank legislation. “The reaction in the Senate is how dare you say that out loud? They’re not upset that somebody lied to them!”
Still, Cruz insisted that he’d have no problem working with the very legislators he’s condemned.
“I think I’ll be able to work very, very well with Republican leadership, partially for focusing on issues that bring us together,” Cruz said.
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The Republican candidate who famously derided “New York values” in a campaign ad months ago made his pitch to New York voters on Thursday, in an MSNBC Town Hall that will air in full at 8 p.m. ET. It’s a state the Texas senator has no real hope of winning outright – front-runner Donald Trump is still the odds-on favorite in his home state – but the senator is working to peel off as many delegates as possible by campaigning in specific districts where he seems likely to win a few delegates. He was pressed on his “New York values comments,” something he said he didn’t regret, arguing that New Yorkers understood them and thanked him for them. “I want to see more jobs and more opportunity for New Yorkers, and I think that’s what New Yorkers want too,” he said. The candidate also declined to answer Chuck Todd’s repeated questions on whether or not he’d support personhood legislation, and argued that the debt makes his generation and his parent’s generation “deadbeats.”
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