Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Tuesday slammed the national media for exaggerating the now-viral reaction of a 3-year-old girl at his speech last weekend in New Hampshire who seemed confused by his assertion that the world was “on fire.”
“This has blown up in the media. Every reporter has written about it, and its gotten worse and worse. It was first girl startled, then it became girl terrified,” he said Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“By the end of it, I’m Freddy Krueger torturing this girl in her nightmares.”
A video from Cruz’s Sunday speech in New Hampshire shows 3-year-old Julia Trant cutting Cruz off during his speech and repeat: “The world’s on fire?” The room broke out into laughter and Cruz told the young girl that her mom and others wanted to “make sure the world you grow up in is even better.”
Many outlets reported the story as Cruz “scaring” Julia, but her mother called into a Boston radio station the next day and explained that she had simply been confused. Cruz said the episode is symptomatic of the “big divide between local press and national press.”
“I spent two days up in New Hampshire; the local press all covered the substance of what I said, the reactions of what happened,” he said.
“The national press, all about the little girl being terrified. You can literally read the stories side by side as if they were covering Mars and Venus.”