April 25, 2016

Ted Cruz Launches Anti-Transgender Attack: It’s Like Donald Trump Dressing Up as Hillary Clinton

Carlos Barria/Reuters/ZUMA

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Sen. Ted Cruz has dived into the controversy surrounding the growing number of anti-transgender bills popping up around the country, arguing that in the absence of such ordinances people are vulnerable to sexual “predators.”

“There is no greater evil than predators,” Cruz said at a campaign event on Saturday. “If the law says that any man, if he chooses, can enter a women’s restroom, a little girl’s restroom, and stay there, and he cannot be removed because he simply says at that moment he feels like a woman, you’re opening the door for predators.”

At the same event in Indiana, the Republican presidential candidate took aim at front-runner Donald Trump, who initially said North Carolina’s version of the law was “problematic” and that transgender people should be able to use the bathroom of their choice. (The real estate magnate has since backtracked.)

“You know the most interesting thing about Donald Trump embracing the PC police is it shows who he really is,” Cruz said. “It shows that Donald Trump is a creature of the elite New York liberals.”

The issue over bathroom laws, which opponents say are enacted to force transgender people to use the bathroom assigned to their birth gender, has proved to be a contentious question for the three remaining Republican presidential candidates, with everyone from Fortune 500 company CEOs and celebrities publicly rebuking the measures as a form of discrimination.

Gov. John Kasich, who is reportedly aligning with Cruz to beat Trump out of winning the party’s nomination outright, has said he would not have signed North Carolina’s bill into law.

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