HANAHAN, S.C. — Donald Trump said he’s hired a lawyer and is preparing to sue to block Sen. Ted Cruz from becoming president, saying the Canadian-born senator is disqualified from being president — and he’ll pull the trigger on the lawsuit if Mr. Cruz doesn’t apologize for campaign “lies.”
“How do you give a man the nomination for your major party, one of the two major parties, and the man has a cloud over his head?” Mr. Trump said at a press conference in South Carolina, also dubbing Mr. Cruz “unstable” for his attacks on the entire GOP field.
With the campaign now fully shifted to South Carolina, which holds its GOP primary on Saturday, Mr. Trump renewed his threat to run as an independent candidate in November, saying the Republican National Committee has defaulted on the terms of his pro-GOP pledge to support the eventual nominee.
Mr. Trump said the last few debates sanctioned by the RNC have been populated with big-donor supporters, which the billionaire businessman said explains why he was booed. He said at this weekend’s debate in Greenville, South Carolina, he saw big-money friends of his in the audience, and they would wave at him — yet boo him at the same time.
The RNC countered that of 1,600 people in the audience, the national committee took 300 tickets. Spokesman Sean Spicer posted a Twitter message saying those went to “grassroots & elected,” and there were “only 10 RNC donors” among those tickets.
He said the campaigns were given 600 tickets to divide evenly — meaning some 100 tickets per campaign — and the rest went to CBS, which aired the debate, and to the South Carolina GOP.
Both the threat to run as an independent and the challenge to Mr. Cruz’s eligibility have become repeated themes for Mr. Trump, who is trying to nurse a lead in the polls here in South Carolina. He said if he wins on Saturday, he could end up running the table in the rest of the contests.
Unlike Iowa and New Hampshire, where voters pride themselves on getting up close and personal with candidates, the campaign here is being fought out in big rallies and on the airwaves, where the ads are increasingly pointed.
And while the campaigns disagree about much, they are finding unity in attacking Mr. Cruz for “lies” they say he’s telling about their records.
Mr. Trump says those lies include questioning his commitment to pro-life and pro-gun stances, while Mr. Rubio says Mr. Cruz is distorting the record on Mr. Rubio’s opposition to same-sex marriage and to federal taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood.
“Senator Cruz will say or do anything to win an election including employing underhanded tactics and making charges against all his opponents that he knows are outright lies,” Rubio spokesman Joe Pounder said.
Mr. Cruz defended his comments about both of his top opponents.
“You cannot simply scream ’liar’ when someone points out your actual positions,” the senator said in a Twitter post.
His campaign also released a 30-second ad pointing to Mr. Trump’s 1999 television interview in which he said he would not ban partial-birth abortion, and more recently when Mr. Trump said Planned Parenthood “serves a good function.”
Mr. Trump says he’s had a conversion and is now staunchly pro-life, and his comments about Planned Parenthood related to their other women’s health services, but not abortion.
On Monday Mr. Trump said Mr. Cruz must apologize or else he’ll go to court. He said the eligibility lawsuit could be filed by Saturday’s primary, but in any event it would happen “pretty quick” once he pulls the trigger.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly questioned Mr. Cruz’s qualifications under the clause of the Constitution that requires presidents to be a “natural born citizen” of the U.S. Mr. Cruz was born to a Cuban father and an American mother while they were living in Canada. Legal scholars lean toward saying Mr. Cruz is likely eligible, and doubt the courts would touch the case anyway — though there are some dissenters, which does leave his eligibility a potentially open question.
Mr. Trump said if he doesn’t sue, Democrats would sue if Mr. Cruz became the nominee, so it makes sense to have the fight now.
But he also said the reason he’s going to pursue the case is to retaliate against Mr. Cruz’s campaign tactics. Mr. Trump said Mr. Cruz has conducted push-polling in South Carolina, following on two tactics used in Iowa to try to boost his own turnout and diminish that of retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.