Cruz Hits At Trump As Indiana Votes, Calling Rival 'Amoral'
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) -- Republican Ted Cruz launched a blistering attack on rival Donald Trump as voters cast ballots in Indiana on Tuesday, calling him "amoral" and likening him to a fictitious character he described as "a braggadocios, arrogant buffoon."
Speaking to reporters in Evansville, Indiana, on the day of the state's presidential primary, Cruz warned that the country could "plunge into the abyss" if Trump is elected president.
"We are not a proud, boastful, self-centered, mean spirited, hateful, bullying nation," Cruz said, with his wife Heidi and running mate Carly Fiorina by his side.
Cruz faces a high-stakes test of his presidential campaign in Tuesday's primary, one of the last opportunities for the Texas senator to halt Trump's stunning march toward the GOP nomination.
Cruz has spent the past week camped out in Indiana, securing the support of the state's governor and announcing Fiorina, a retired technology executive, as his running mate. And he's vowed to stay in the race, regardless of the results.
"I am in for the distance, as long as we have a viable path to victory," Cruz told reporters on Monday.
Trump devoted more time to campaigning in Indiana than he has to most other states, underscoring his eagerness to put his Republican rival away and shift his attention toward Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.
While Trump cannot clinch the nomination with a big win in Indiana, his path would get easier and he would have more room for error in the campaign's final contests.
"Indiana is very important, because if I win that's the end of it. It would be over," Trump said during a lunch stop Monday in Indianapolis.
Trump launched his own tirade against the Texas senator earlier Tuesday, rehashing unsubstantiated claims that Cruz's father, Rafael Cruz, appeared in a 1963 photograph with John F. Kennedy's assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald -- citing a report first published by the National Enquirer.
"His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald's being, you know, shot," Trump said Tuesday on Fox & Friends. "Nobody even brings it up; I mean they don't even talk about that."
Cruz responded to the claims Tuesday, calling his father his "hero," and labeling Trump as "amoral."
Cruz also said America is "looking, potentially, at the Biff Tannen presidency," referencing a character in the "Back to the Future" films. He described the character as "a braggadocious, arrogant buffoon who builds giant casinos with giant pictures of him everywhere he looks."
The film's screenwriter Bob Gale told the Daily Beast last year that the character is based on Trump.
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