But Cruz’s team has made clear that’s not the case, opening a residence for volunteers there similar to the one it has in Iowa and planning a bus tour of New Hampshire later this month. Trump has ramped up his attacks on Cruz since the Texas senator sprinted ahead of the billionaire businessman in some opinion surveys in early-voting Iowa.
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Despite being previously compared by pundits to 2012 presidential flameouts such as pizza magnate Herman Cain and Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, Trump’s campaign has entered 2016 firmly leading the GOP race, according to a January 5 poll conducted by NBC News/SurveyMonkey.
“I’d hate to see something like that get in his way”, Trump said.
And while the GOP primary is far from being whittled down to only two candidates, Cruz has arguably emerged as Trump’s strongest rival.
Still, he wouldn’t utter a cross word about the Republican front-runner, refusing to mention Trump by name.
Trump, who famously raised doubts about President Obama’s birthplace, began asking questions about Cruz’s citizenship during interviews Tuesday. So will people raise this for political mischief? In 1964, Barry Goldwater, who was born in the US territory of Arizona before it became a state, won the Republican nomination but lost to Lyndon B. Johnson by the largest margin in history at the time. Anyone born to a US citizen is granted citizenship under USA law, regardless of where the birth takes place, with the requirement that the citizen has resided in the United States or its territories for at least five years, including two years after the age of 14. “I think my record is stronger than any other Republican candidate in the field”. Barry Goldwater’s birth there before Arizona became a state.
In an interview with The Washington Post on Tuesday, Trump said Cruz’s birthplace-Canada-could be a “precarious” issue for the Republican Party.
He added that it would be a precarious one the Republicans because he would be running and the courts could take a long period to come up with a decision.
“Learn things you shouldn’t say on television” is another recommendation, pointing to the moment in late December when Trump said Hillary Clinton “got schlonged” by Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary. Sixty-eight percent of Trump backers say they are no longer persuadable.
“It’s false”, he told CNN Wednesday. Cruz, who had dual citizenship because of his birth in Canada, also renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2014 as he was readying to run for president.
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Trump had questioned Cruz’s legal qualifications before though.
