Shortly after Donald Trump began a press conference in which he not-so-subtly suggested that he might break his pledge to not run as an independent candidate, his campaign released a statement threatening to sue Ted Cruz, because nothing is too crazy for this particular primary battle.
In the press release, Trump demanded that Cruz “take down his false ads and retract his lies.” Should Cruz decline to follow Trump’s orders, Trump plans to “fight back” by “[bringing] a lawsuit against him relative to the fact that he was born in Canada and therefore cannot be president.” “Ted Cruz is a totally unstable individual,” the statement continued. “He is the single biggest liar I’ve ever come across, in politics or otherwise, and I have seen some of the best of them. His statements are totally untrue and completely outrageous.”
(For the record: Cruz was born in Calgary to an American mother and Cuban father, making him a citizen of both the United States and Canada. He cleansed himself of his Canadian citizenship in June 2014. Most scholars agree that Cruz is eligible to be president of the United States, but it would take the Supreme Court to say for sure.)
This isn’t the first time that Trump — who, lest you forget, spent years questioning whether President Obama was, in fact, born in Hawaii — has brought up the circumstances of Cruz’s birth. But he might mean business this time around: When asked how quickly he intended to file the lawsuit, Trump said that he’d “maybe” do it in time for next week’s South Carolina primary “if I can.”
