# Trump links Rafael Cruz to JFK assassination; cites National Enquirer as authority **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [May 3, 2016, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-links-rafael-cruz-to-jfk-assassination-cites-national-enquirer-as-authority/753799 "2016-05-03T18:31:24Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [May 4, 2016, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-links-rafael-cruz-to-jfk-assassination-cites-national-enquirer-as-authority/753799/21 "2016-05-04T17:37:02Z")
There’s an underlying fiction in this “he only won a plurality” line, i.e. all the Rubio, Cruz and Kasich supporters are #NeverTrumpers. Hitting solidly above everyone else in the 3-4 man field while still being many people’s second choice is pretty good. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-links-rafael-cruz-to-jfk-assassination-cites-national-enquirer-as-authority/753799/22 "2016-05-05T02:26:08Z")
I, for one, hope that Trump’s vindictiveness continues to hold no bounds and the NE continues to publish front page stories about Cruz’s girlfriends and his dad’s assassination history (Hey, it COULD be him! ;)) in order to push Ted Cruz deeper into the dustbin of history. And that one woman’s tweets about “Daddy Cruz,” presumably Ted but if they were about Rafe Sr he’s doing real good for an old guy, they were entertaining in a “crazy girlfriend” way. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-links-rafael-cruz-to-jfk-assassination-cites-national-enquirer-as-authority/753799/23 "2016-05-05T03:14:07Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Good, anything that destroys or undermines Ted Cruz is a net benefit to the Republic and her citizenry. Couldn’t agree more. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 3:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-links-rafael-cruz-to-jfk-assassination-cites-national-enquirer-as-authority/753799/24 "2016-05-05T03:16:50Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > I, for one, hope that Trump’s vindictiveness continues to hold no bounds and the NE continues to publish front page stories about Cruz’s girlfriends and his dad’s assassination history (Hey, it COULD be him! ;)) in order to push Ted Cruz deeper into the dustbin of history. > > And that one woman’s tweets about “Daddy Cruz,” presumably Ted but if they were about Rafe Sr he’s doing real good for an old guy, they were entertaining in a “crazy girlfriend” way. Yes, absolutely. If someone deserves to have their political career hacked by complete falsehoods it’s Ted Cruz. Just a complete slime, and so is the movement he represents. I’ve been somewhat timid in saying this around people I know in real life but I’m becoming much less so: I actually was relieved that Trump won the nomination. I shudder at the thought of him being president, but it’s good to see that he was able to successfully beat back the religious kooks that have dominated the republican party the past 25 years. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-links-rafael-cruz-to-jfk-assassination-cites-national-enquirer-as-authority/753799/25 "2016-05-05T05:50:08Z")
My dream is that Cruz gets so pissed off by attacks against his father he turns around and endorses Hillary Clinton. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 6:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-links-rafael-cruz-to-jfk-assassination-cites-national-enquirer-as-authority/753799/26 "2016-05-05T06:14:33Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > Yes, absolutely. If someone deserves to have their political career hacked by complete falsehoods it’s Ted Cruz. Just a complete slime, and so is the movement he represents. And, as I’d expect someone on this board to understand, no one deserves that. Lies designed to harm people are this thing called “wrong” you might have heard someone talk about in passing. This attitude is what Trump has and what makes him such a horrible thing. He just attacks. He doesn’t care if it’s true. He doesn’t care if he even has an actual reason to attack. All he cares is that Cruz attacked him, and he’s going to make him pay. Cruz is out of the race. He’s not even a threat. There’s no reason to attack him now. But Trump is still doing it. Because Trump is a fucking psychopath and the first blatantly evil presidential candidate. Even racist candidates in the past weren’t blatantly evil–they were at least in line with society at the time. This sort of thing is exactly why I switched from “he’d be a bad president” to “He’s be a fucking dangerous president.” He’s just so childish and throws such tantrums that it’s only matter of time before he’d fuck something up diplomatically. He doesn’t have to press the big button. He’s just got to go on the attack enough that others feel threatened. And, with Putin, who is also the same type of person, it could become an escalation cycle. Trump finds it way, way too hard to back down. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-links-rafael-cruz-to-jfk-assassination-cites-national-enquirer-as-authority/753799/27 "2016-05-05T06:31:18Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > [http://m.en.canoe.com/CNEWS/World/2016/05/03/22629493.html](http://m.en.canoe.com/CNEWS/World/2016/05/03/22629493.html) > > And yet, the man will likely be the Republican nominee. > > I’ve concluded that Daniel Moynihan was naively wrong. Trump is entitled to his own facts. I will picture now Trump as an older Alfalfa from Saturday Night Live (1983). [The National Enquirer! [Alfalfa] For people with enquiring minds, like meee!](http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/the-enquirer/n9102) ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-links-rafael-cruz-to-jfk-assassination-cites-national-enquirer-as-authority/753799/28 "2016-05-05T06:39:33Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > It’s mostly because the Dope has a large number of Sanders supporters, so I don’t feel the need to post the same thing as them. If you don’t believe me, feel free to ask for my stance on say immigration or torture to see whether my stance is closer to the man from Brooklyn or Queens. Asking you questions about your beliefs would be the last way to evaluate your truthfulness. **If** that is in question, then people have no reason to believe what you say. There are other ways to avoid saying the same things as Sanders supporters than acting like a Trump supporter. If you are a progressive, why praise Trump’s toxic masculinity? Why use a slur like “cuck” against men who reject that form of masculinity? Why try to turn Rubio into a homophobic joke? You can’t play Devil’s Advocate without telling people that’s what you are doing. People are going to assume the position you support is your actual position. You may not have meant to portray that you were a Trump supporter, but you sure came off as one. And you were given many, many opportunities to clarify and did not. The only reason I didn’t think you were was your profile and the fact that you have previously admitted to being on the autism spectrum. So I just gathered you were more likely clueless about how you were coming across. I don’t think there are very many people who don’t think you and Starving Artist share the same basic views on Trump. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Lowry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@Sam\_Lowry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Lowry)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 1:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-links-rafael-cruz-to-jfk-assassination-cites-national-enquirer-as-authority/753799/29 "2016-05-05T13:39:20Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > All the headlines I’ve seen about the incident say that Cruz responded by “going ballistic”. But I saw the speech he made in response, and I was actually impressed by how calm he was about it. I mean, yes, he did say that Trump was a pathological liar, but really, that’s the only sane, rational response to something that absurd. Cruz didn’t go ballistic, but he was the most angry he’s been since he’s pretty much refrained from going after Trump so far. [He has been mainly singing Trump’s praises up until now](http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/05/03/3774922/ted-cruz-unloads-donald-trump-indiana/). Cruz was sane and rational in responding, too bad he hadn’t been sane and rational talking about Trump earlier in the campaign. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-links-rafael-cruz-to-jfk-assassination-cites-national-enquirer-as-authority/753799/30 "2016-05-05T13:44:30Z")
[Former top McCain aide: I’ll vote for Clinton over Trump](http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/former-top-mccain-aide-ill-vote-clinton-over-trump) > [@](#): > > A former top aide to Sen. John McCain says he will support Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in November as both candidates appear close to locking down their parties’ nominations. > > Mark Salter was for years McCain’s closest aide, serving as strategist, speechwriter, Senate chief of staff and biographer to the 2008 Republican presidential nominee. But now, Salter says he’ll break with the Republican Party if it nominates Trump and vote for Clinton instead. > > “Basically, I think she’s the more conservative choice and the least reckless one,” Salter told MSNBC in an email. “[Trump’s] policy views are like some drunk’s rant. If he tried to do anything like he says he will, we’d have no allies, a lot more enemies, and more of them with nukes. Finally, he’s unfit for the office, too, temperamentally and morally, a narcissistic bigot.” > [@](#): > > “**[T]he GOP is going to nominate for President a guy who reads the National Enquirer and thinks it’s on the level,” Salter tweeted Tuesday**, adding Clinton’s slogan: “I’m with her.” ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-links-rafael-cruz-to-jfk-assassination-cites-national-enquirer-as-authority/753799/31 "2016-05-05T21:11:29Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Asking you questions about your beliefs would be the last way to evaluate your truthfulness. **If** that is in question, then people have no reason to believe what you say. > > There are other ways to avoid saying the same things as Sanders supporters than acting like a Trump supporter. If you are a progressive, why praise Trump’s toxic masculinity? What do you mean by “toxic masculinity”? Certainly I’ve never praised nor defended say Trump’s adulteries for example. If you mean his utterly un-Presidential tone and the constant insults he aimed at the 16 morons running against him in the Republican primaries, I do admit I found that not just amusing but deeply refreshing, for he exposed them as the scams they were. > [@](#): > > Why use a slur like “cuck” against men who reject that form of masculinity? I used that term (which I won’t mention here, given the instructions of the moderators) to deliberately refer to the sort of Republicans like [Kevin D. Williamson](http://www.nationalreview.com/article/432876/donald-trump-white-working-class-dysfunction-real-opportunity-needed-not-trump) who are whining about how the white working-class isn’t voting yet again for their agenda of more tax cuts, gutting social welfare spending, free trade, importing unfree labour, and foreign wars like they were supposed to. I do indeed consider these people-both the politicians and the pundits-to be tools and not even conservatives in any real sense of the term. They aren’t trying to “conserve” the organic American nation, they want to continue to make it the primary engine of global Capital. I think it’s a reasonably effective insult to refer to cowards or those lacking in principle in general and at this point it’s become a casual term of contempt used even by the ([Redirecting...](https://www.facebook.com/declasscucked.memes/?fref=ts)). > [@](#): > > Why try to turn Rubio into a homophobic joke? Except I wasn’t, at least not anymore then when this forum was gleeful about [Ted Haggard](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=394709) being discovered to be a homosexual. Also the rumour’s became a running gag on another forum I frequent which is mostly liberal and some of the ones peddling the Rubio rumour the most were openly gay. > [@](#): > > You can’t play Devil’s Advocate without telling people that’s what you are doing. People are going to assume the position you support is your actual position. > > You may not have meant to portray that you were a Trump supporter, but you sure came off as one. And you were given many, many opportunities to clarify and did not. I’ve explained my position time and time again. But here’s my basic thesis of what I might call “Left-Trumpism” 1. Donald Trump was the least awful of the 17 men and women running for the Republican nomination because of his positions on entitlements, foreign wars etc. 2. Trump was further valuable not only in his ideological heresies but his constant mockery of low-energy Jeb, lyin’ Ted, little Marco, and so on severely undermined far more dangerous candidates and made sure they were discredited in the eyes of the Republican electorate 3. Trump is mobilizing white working-class anger in a simultaneously very useful and very dangerous way, which the left can take advantage of > [@](#): > > The only reason I didn’t think you were was your profile and the fact that you have previously admitted to being on the autism spectrum. So I just gathered you were more likely clueless about how you were coming across. I know exactly how I’m coming across. > [@](#): > > I don’t think there are very many people who don’t think you and Starving Artist share the same basic views on Trump. Except I affirm my liberal positions on various issues all the time. To give an example, I actually support the refugees coming here unlike say **SlackerInc** , You will notice that every time I praised Trump, it was from a left-wing perspective unlike **Starving Artist** ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-links-rafael-cruz-to-jfk-assassination-cites-national-enquirer-as-authority/753799/32 "2016-05-05T21:19:38Z")
Destroying Cruz won’t help. Trump is going after Cruz personally, which might get him personally out of office, or at least out of his outsized relevance in office. But he’ll just be replaced by someone else with the same toxic politics. To really make a difference, you’d need to attack Cruz’s politics, which Trump isn’t doing. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-links-rafael-cruz-to-jfk-assassination-cites-national-enquirer-as-authority/753799/33 "2016-05-05T21:24:59Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Destroying Cruz won’t help. Trump is going after Cruz personally, which might get him personally out of office, or at least out of his outsized relevance in office. But he’ll just be replaced by someone else with the same toxic politics. To really make a difference, you’d need to attack Cruz’s politics, which Trump isn’t doing. Not necessarily. Ted Cruz is uniquely capable and intelligent in the same way Richard Nixon was so were he to be replaced by some random generic Tea Party backbencher, he’d be much less of a threat on a national level. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2016, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-links-rafael-cruz-to-jfk-assassination-cites-national-enquirer-as-authority/753799/34 "2016-05-05T21:45:32Z")
In any normal election cycle we’d be wiping sweat off our foreheads in relief that Cruz had dropped out. Cruz is competent, smart, inhumanly disciplined, boundlessly ambitious, and utterly amoral. He would be an incredible disaster as a president, and we can be extremely grateful that he’s out of the running. The only problem is that leaves the nomination to Donald Trump, who is in many ways the exact opposite of Cruz, equally a disaster but for wildly different reasons. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2016, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-links-rafael-cruz-to-jfk-assassination-cites-national-enquirer-as-authority/753799/35 "2016-05-06T02:26:34Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > And, as I’d expect someone on this board to understand, no one deserves that. Lies designed to harm people are this thing called “wrong” you might have heard someone talk about in passing. > > This attitude is what Trump has and what makes him such a horrible thing. He just attacks. He doesn’t care if it’s true. He doesn’t care if he even has an actual reason to attack. All he cares is that Cruz attacked him, and he’s going to make him pay. > > Cruz is out of the race. He’s not even a threat. There’s no reason to attack him now. But Trump is still doing it. Because Trump is a fucking psychopath and the first blatantly evil presidential candidate. Even racist candidates in the past weren’t blatantly evil–they were at least in line with society at the time. > > This sort of thing is exactly why I switched from “he’d be a bad president” to “He’s be a fucking dangerous president.” He’s just so childish and throws such tantrums that it’s only matter of time before he’d fuck something up diplomatically. > > He doesn’t have to press the big button. He’s just got to go on the attack enough that others feel threatened. And, with Putin, who is also the same type of person, it could become an escalation cycle. > > Trump finds it way, way too hard to back down. Trump’s horrible and all that, but Ted Cruz is worse. I look at the Trump - Cruz scuffle like two convicted murderers going at it in a Super Max prison. Yeah, it’s “wrong,” but so what? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-links-rafael-cruz-to-jfk-assassination-cites-national-enquirer-as-authority/753799.md?page=1)