Potential White House contender Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) looks like a “hero” to one of his youngest fans after a recent visit to New Hampshire.
“The Obama economy is a disaster, ObamaCare is a train wreck, and the Obama-Clinton foreign policy of leading from behind — the whole world’s on fire,” Cruz said during a Sunday speech in Barrington.
But 3-year-old Julia Trant — or Julie, as accounts vary — recoiled at the hyperbole.
{mosads}“The world’s on fire?” she asked, sparking a wave of laughter from Cruz and the rest of the crowd.
Cruz pivoted towards the young supporter to offer some assurance.
“The world is on fire, yes! Your world is on fire,” he said. “But you know what? Your mommy’s here, and everyone’s here to make sure the world you grow up in is even better.”
The girl’s mother, Michelle Trant, appeared Monday on “The Kuhner Report,” a Boston AM radio show, downplaying reports that her daughter had been scared by Cruz’s rhetoric. She said her daughter was confused, looking up from a phone she had been playing with to register her concern.
“As a huge Ted Cruz supporter, both my husband and myself, I said to her: ‘He will be the one to put that fire out,” Trant said. “So she looked at him as he was a hero.”
The little girl was apparently satisfied with that answer.
“Oh, tell him thank you,” the girl said, according to her mother.
“Now, we can go home.”
Cruz quickly returned to his prepared remarks after the pause, where he emphasized his limited-government message, calling for the end of ObamaCare, Common Core and the IRS.
“There are 110,000 agents at the IRS. We need to put a padlock on that building and take every one of those 110,000 agents and put them on our southern border,” he said.
“I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but think about it for a minute. Imagine you have traveled thousands of miles in the blinding sun, you’re dripping wet, you swim the Rio Grande and the first thing you see is 110,000 IRS agents? You’d turn around and go home, too.”
The freshman senator, a Tea Party favorite, is expected to make a decision about whether he’ll run for president within the next few months. He’s currently earning about 4 percent of both the national primary vote and the New Hampshire primary vote, according to a Real Clear Politics analysis of recent polls.