Before U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and an announced candidate for president spoke to the John Locke Foundation’s headliner luncheon, he took a few moments to speak with reporters gathered outside the North Raleigh Hilton.
“I’m very glad to have the opportunity to speak to the John Locke Foundation in particular about the national security and foreign policy challenges we have,” Cruz said.
Noting that Hillary Clinton just announced her candidacy for the same job, Cruz said, “Hillary Clinton represents the failed policies of the past. What I’m going to address today is the manifest failures of the Obama-Clinton foreign policy.”
Cruz continued: “Their leadership of leading from behind has resulted in the entire world becoming a more dangerous place. Today, our friends don’t trust us, and our enemies don’t fear us.”
Cruz expanded on his foreign policy statements:
“We have seen Putin on the march. We have seed the rise of ISIS. We have seen a historically dangerous deal with Iran that is paving the way for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.”
On his colleague Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who also just announced for the race, Cruz said:
“I’m a big fan of Marco Rubio. He’s a friend of mine. We are both the sons of immigrants who fled Cuba and came to America seeking freedom. I welcome Marco to the race. He is a talented communicator and his participation in the race will strengthen the field and no doubt strengthen the debates that we have in the coming year.”
Cruz said that the most pressing challenge that we have now is that a majority of Americans for the first time in history believe that our children will have a worse life than we did. “We have to reignite the promise of America,” Cruz said. “And the way to do that is to bring back jobs, and growth, and opportunity.” Cruz called for adopting a “simple, flat tax” and pull back the regulators “that have descended like locusts” on small business destroying jobs. “And the most important regulatory reform is to repeal every word of Obamacare,” Cruz said. He said Obamacare is the single biggest job killer in the country.
He chided Obama for deliberately saying that people could keep their insurance if they wanted to, saying that millions of people lost their health insurance and lost their doctor.
