Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz says prominent Democrats don’t respect deceased Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
“Sadly, I’m not surprised [President Obama] will not go to Justice Scalia’s funeral,” he said Thursday on “The Mike Gallagher Show.” “President Obama, and for that matter [Democratic presidential candidates] Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, look down at you and me and Justice Scalia and conservatives.
{mosads}“[They view us] as essentially the ignorant masses. We’re in flyover country,” Cruz added.
“Obama summed it up during his unguarded moment in the 2008 election. He described all of us as bitter and angry and clinging to our God and our guns. I’m not bitter, but we are angry. [Obama] can’t have either our God or our guns.”
Cruz argued there is precedent for Obama snubbing prominent right-wing figures in the past.
“We saw something like this a few years ago when President Obama refused to attend Margaret Thatcher’s funeral,” he said, referencing the former British prime minister, who died in 2013.
“Now Margaret Thatcher — you want to talk about a historical figure that stood with America, that along with Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul were pivotal in winning the Cold War, defeating the Soviet Union. For the American president not to attend was just disgraceful,” Cruz added.
The Texas senator praised Scalia’s work on the Supreme Court following the justice’s death Saturday.
“Justice Scalia spent three decades on the court, transforming the direction of American law,” Cruz said. “As Ronald Reagan was to the presidency, so Justice Scalia was to the Supreme Court.”