Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) may be able to distance himself from the Tea Party if he runs for president in 2016, but he’ll have a harder time doing the same thing with his own father.
The ultra-conservative senator, now infamous for his role in the recent government shutdown, has been one of President Barack Obama’s harshest critics but he’s been careful to keep his rhetoric out of birther conspiracy theory territory.
But his father is a different story altogether.
In a 2012 address to a group of Tea Partiers in Hood County, Texas, which was caught on tape and has since leaked, Raphael Cruz declares that the United States is a “Christian Nation” and suggests President Barack Obama should “go back to Kenya.”
Despite repeatedly insisting that he is a Christian and having produced an authentic copy of his birth certificate proving he was born in Hawaii, the president’s most extreme opponents refuse to accept that he is an American citizen and often imply that he practices the Muslim faith.
Raphael Cruz’s views on the president haven’t softened since 2012, either. In a 2013 video he claimed that President Obama is just like Cuba’s Fidel Castro.