GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Tuesday floated a supermarket tabloid report that Rafael Cruz, the father of Sen. Ted Cruz, was pictured with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the JFK assassination — a charge that led the Cruz campaign to say Mr. Trump is “detached from reality” and desperate for attention.
“His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being, you know, shot,” Mr. Trump said on “Fox and Friends.” “I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous. What is this, right, prior to his being shot — and nobody even brings it up.”
“They don’t even talk about that, and that was reported and nobody talks about it,” he said.
“What was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death, before the shooting?” Mr. Trump said.
The National Enquirer recently published a photo the magazine said was the elder Mr. Cruz and Mr. Oswald, who shot and killed President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
“Trump is detached from reality, and his false, cheap, meaningless comments every day indicate his desperation to get attention and willingness to say anything to do so,” Cruz campaign spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said in an email in response.
“We are campaigning on jobs freedom and security while trump campaigns on false tabloid garbage,” she said. “And the media is willfully enabling him to cheapen the value of our democratic process.”
The Cruz campaign had previously called the story false and said that Rafael Cruz was not the other man in the photo, according to a write-up by McClatchy.
In March, the candidate himself also forcefully denounced a report in the tabloid floating rumors of extramarital affairs and said it was Mr. Trump’s team that had been peddling the story.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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