Ted Cruz explains his tweets: That ‘numbskull’ ‘ticked me off’

Joining the Mark Davis radio program Tuesday, Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, repeated his strong condemnations of the white supremacist groups that gathered in Charlottesville Saturday, and criticized the Left for “demagoguing” the issue to score cheap political points.

“We shouldn’t be seeing this in America,” Cruz said. “Listen: Nazis, and the Klan, and white supremacists, these guys are racist, racist, bigoted thugs. They’re idiots. What they’re saying is wrong. They’re lies.”

“And under the First Amendment they have a right to speak,” Sen. Cruz said.

“Even those profoundly wrong have a right to speak and express their views, but they’ve got to express it peaceably. They don’t have a right to violence, they don’t have a right to murder, they don’t have a right to assault others.”

Despite insisting on even detestable groups’ freedom to protest, Senator Cruz said there is a “moral obligation” for the rest of us to denounce “the lies, and bigotry, and evil, and hatred they’re spreading.”

He criticized Democrats and the mainstream media for slandering conservatives by equating them with Alt-“Right” white supremacists.

“One of the things we’re seeing going on is the media and the Democrats are, to the surprise of no one, demagoguing this issue and using it for political advantage,” Cruz said. “So, in the media’s telling, they want to tar and feather any Republican, any conservative, and paint us all as these crazy racist nutbags.”

To anyone with eyes to see, Cruz speaks the truth. With few, and very rare exceptions, conservatives are united in their forceful denunciation of the hatred, bigotry, and evil of hate groups. Senator Cruz was among the first conservatives to call the Charlottesville vehicular attack a “grotesque act of domestic terrorism,” requesting that the Justice Department investigate and prosecute in full.

The liberal media predictably remain unconvinced. Cruz recounted how New York Times reporter Eric Lipton cynically dismissed condemnations of white supremacists and neo-Nazis from Senator Rubio and himself as “posturing for 2020.”

"Gosh, you're right," Cruz retorted on Twitter Sunday. "Because Nazis & the Klan have such love for Cuban-Americans. If only we worked for a paper that shilled for Stalin...."

“I have to admit Mark, I read [Lipton’s] tweet at the dinner table, and it ticked me off,” Cruz told Davis. “You know, God bless, if you want to attack us could you try not calling us Nazis, you numbskull?”

Senator Cruz also relayed that he got in trouble with Mrs. Cruz for tweeting at the dinner table, “But I was so worked up by the New York Times reporter I had to send the tweet.”