"This is an emergency - all hands on deck," his fundraising letter added. I knew I'd be facing attacks from day one of my campaign, but I never expected anything like this."Ĭruz accused the "liberal media" of attempting to "attack and destroy me (and my family) by any means necessary." "My daughters are not FAIR GAME," he wrote in a fundraising email sent late Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Cruz launched an "emergency" appeal seeking to raise $1 million in 24 hours in response to the cartoon. That has no place in politics."Ĭruz also said that he "appreciates" the support of his fellow Republicans and that he's glad that the Washington Post removed the image. But don't be attacking five year-old girls. Leave kids alone And if the media wants to attack and ridicule every Republican, well that's what they're gonna do. "It used to be for a long time the rules across the board that kids are off limits," he added. "Not too much ticks me off, but making fun of my girls, that'll do it," Cruz said in response to the cartoon, which has since been taken down. Ted Cruz hammered the Washington Post on Wednesday for publishing an online editorial cartoon depicting his two young daughters as dancing monkeys, telling a crowd in Tulsa that the attack "has no place in politics." Having The Post yank the cartoon allows him to look like he gets results from people who his supporters believe to be predisposed against his – and his their – worldview.Sen.
Setting the Trump-ish language aside, that is one of the knocks against Cruz: He’s full of principle but short on results. This is a candidate who was recently called a “maniac” by GOP front-runner Donald Trump because he has a penchant for tactics – he read “Green Eggs and Ham” to his daughters during a filibuster in 2013 – that ultimately changed little and irritated many colleagues.
Two, the Post’s retraction makes the anti-establishment pushback of Cruz and his supporters seem effective. But leave our kids alone.” And he wasted little time before using the incident to solicit campaign contributions, hoping backers would channel their outrage through donations. At a rally in Tulsa on Wednesday, he did just that, telling a crowd of supporters that “if the media wants to attack and ridicule every Republican, well that’s what they’re gonna do. The cartoon episode does two things for Cruz: One, it gives him a piece of evidence to pull out whenever he wants to argue that the “mainstream media” doesn’t treat him – or conservatives in general – fairly.
Whether you agree with Telnaes’s original reasoning or Hiatt’s overriding rationale, one thing is likely obvious to any political observer: This is a win for a candidate who is rising in the polls thanks to support from more conservative Republicans and who has been highly critical of the press – most memorably during the third Republican presidential debate, when he blasted the moderators’ questions as being illustrative of “why the American people don’t trust the media.” Telnaes deleted a tweet that included the cartoon, and on Wednesday tweeted that she would not be commenting further, but planned to address the controversy in writing at some point.Ī Tuesday tweet that remained visible on the page as of late Wednesday said that Cruz “has put his children in a political ad- don’t start screaming when editorial cartoonists draw them as well.” I understand why Ann thought an exception to the policy was warranted in this case, but I do not agree.” “I failed to look at this cartoon before it was published. But when a politician uses his children as political props, as Ted Cruz recently did in his Christmas parody video in which his eldest daughter read (with her father’s dramatic flourish) a passage of an edited Christmas classic, then I figure they are fair game.”įred Hiatt, The Post’s editorial page editor, reached a different conclusion: “It’s generally been the policy of our editorial section to leave children out of it,” Hiatt said in a statement that replaced the cartoon. In a brief statement that accompanied the cartoon while it was online for several hours, Telnaes wrote that “there is an unspoken rule in editorial cartooning that a politician’s children are off-limits. A headline said, “Ted Cruz uses his kids as political props” – a reference to a recent viral campaign video in which Cruz and his daughters spoofed familiar Christmas stories. The animated cartoon, by Pulitzer Prize winner Ann Telnaes, sketched the Texas senator in a Santa suit turning a Jack-in-the-box-style crank that made the monkeys dance. Ted Cruz Fights Political Cartoon Featuring His Daughters 24,012 views 63 Dislike Share Save ABC News 13.1M subscribers The GOP presidential candidate is angry after The Washington. Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz was handed a political gift Tuesday night when The Washington Post retracted an editorial cartoon that depicted his two young daughters as monkeys.