Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is not relenting on his criticism of former President Carter despite public sorrow over his cancer diagnosis.
Cruz continued his longtime attacks on the former president one day after Carter revealed his melanoma has gotten worse.
{mosads}“We can always have a discussion about public policy,” Cruz said on Friday after an address at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines, according to Bloomberg. “The public policy of the late 1970s didn’t work.”
“And the point that I made here that was so important is that in response to the failures of public policy in the late 1970s there was a grassroots movement of millions of men and women that rose up and became the Reagan revolution,” he added. “And that same thing is happening today.”
Cruz, a 2016 GOP presidential candidate, has often bashed Carter’s record since joining the campaign trail earlier this year.
The Texas lawmaker did not soften his tone when addressing Carter’s Oval Office legacy on Friday morning.
“I think that where we are today is very, very much like the late 1970s,” Cruz said from The Des Moines Register’s political soapbox at the Iowa State Fair.
“I think the parallels between this administration and the Carter administration are uncanny: same failed policies, same misery, stagnation and malaise, same feckless and naïve foreign policy,” he said. “In fact, the exact same countries — Russia and Iran — [are] openly laughing and mocking at the president of the United States.”
“We know how that story ended,” Cruz added. “All across this country, millions of men and women rose up and became the Reagan revolution.”
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) defended Cruz’s choice of words on Friday following the White House hopeful’s address.
“Jimmy Carter is a decent man and his heart has always been right,” King said, Bloomberg reported on Friday. “His head hasn’t always been what I think is right for America.”
Carter announced on Thursday that cancer present in his liver has since spread into his brain.
He is immediately beginning radiation treatment despite his prognosis, stating that the illness “is likely to show up in other places in my body.”
“I’m perfectly at east with whatever comes,” said Carter, 90, during a press conference in Atlanta. “[It is] in the hands of God.”