Rafael Cruz is a pastor and a prolific speaker with a compelling story — who also has a history of saying incendiary things. A BuzzFeed News review.
Ted Cruz's Senate YouTube Page / Via youtube.com
When Sen. Ted Cruz began his first speech as a presidential candidate on Monday, he talked about his father.
The story of Rafael Cruz — growing up in Cuba, joining a revolution to overthrow Batista at age 17, jailed and tortured, and fleeing to the United States — has been an integral part of the Texas senator's political story.
But don't take it from Ted: Rafael is also out on the stump, telling his own story. Since his son's election and rise as a conservative star, the elder Cruz has become a popular and prolific Tea Party speaker around the country. His life story is compelling, and it doesn't end once he left Cuba — a straight A student, he got accepted to the University of Texas-Austin and after a family friend bribed an official to stamp his passport, made his way by ferry to Key West. There he boarded a bus for Texas where he says he learned English by repeatedly watching movies and paid his way through school working as dishwasher. His life was turned around when he found his faith in the Lord.
But at the grassroots events featuring Rafael Cruz, he often makes news in a different kind of way. "Pastor Cruz does not speak for the senator," statements from his son's office frequently note, when one controversial statement or another surfaces.
Rafael Cruz would like to send Obama "back to Kenya, back to Indonesia," he said at one gathering. Obama, "probably doesn't have any problem with what this butcher in Philadelphia is doing," he said of abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell who killed babies born alive. The "average black" doesn't understand why the minimum wage is bad, he said at another.
A BuzzFeed News review of Cruz's speeches finds him often making controversial, conspiracy-based claims about the Obama administration, many of which are listed below.
Cruz has said Fidel Castro used the rhetoric of "hope and change."
"As some of you know, I was born in Cuba. At the age of 14 years of age I was involved in a revolution. We were suffering from a very cruel, oppressive dictatorship, and the revolution started in the high schools and the universities. So when I was 14, I was involved in the revolution. I was in the revolution four years. During that time, a young, charismatic leader rose up in Cuba, talking about hope and change. His name was Fidel Castro."
Cruz has argued the Obama administration efforts for gun control are so "they can impose a dictatorship upon us." Cruz argued Obama is trying to ban guns through the United Nations.
“The Obama administration wants to take our rights to keep and bear arms away from us. They are trying to take our God, and our gun. And if they do that, they can impose a dictatorship upon us. Now he’s been trying it through the courts, through the legislature – hasn’t gone anywhere. Now he’s trying through the United Nations. And there is now some proposals in the United Nations to try to impose a ban on guns. And of course we have a precedent, too: When Ted fought for U.S. sovereignty when the United Nations tried to impose their rule on our courts, and Ted fought defending U.S. sovereignty all of the way through the United Nations to the Supreme Court and won."
Via youtube.com
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