Pushes back

Heidi Cruz pushes back against Trump

By Nick Gass

Heidi Cruz is answering Donald Trump's attacks against her husband in a recent interview by painting a sympathetic, kind portrait of the Texas senator as a husband and father.

"Yeah, so there are a lot of false suggestions out there because I think some candidates are trying to distract from how well Ted’s doing in this election," she told CNN's Dana Bash in an interview aired Wednesday, when asked about Trump's continued mention of Cruz's unreported loans from Goldman Sachs, where she worked until the campaign began, and from Citibank.

Asked if she though that Trump was saying it to distract, Cruz replied in the affirmative.

“I think so. Yeah. When you look at the track record, our financial history is public, we’ve put it all out there. And we paid back those loans," she responded.

Pressed on Trump's continued needling about her husband's presidential eligibility based on his birth to an American-born mother on Canadian soil, Cruz shrugged it off.

“I don’t think it’s hurt the campaign. I know that this is not a legally disputed issue," she said. "This has come up many times before, has been settled as to what is a natural-born citizen. Ted perfectly fits that definition, and so I think it’s another example of distractions.”

She also hit back at any notion that the evangelical community could be coalescing around Trump, after the endorsement of Liberty University chancellor and president Jerry Falwell Jr. on Tuesday.

“If you look at the people who have endorsed Ted Cruz for president, there is no doubt who the evangelical community is supporting," she said. Cruz received the backing of Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Tuesday.

Cruz remarked earlier in the same interview that she wanted to "tell the American people who Ted is ... an incredibly thoughtful person, a person who never misses a birthday, who never misses Valentine’s, who reads bedtime stories to his daughters."

Bash then alluded to Cruz reading "Green Eggs and Ham" to his daughters from the Senate floor during his 2013 filibuster.

“Even from the Senate floor, and more importantly at home. A person who, when I’m really busy running around the house the other day when he had a lot more on his plate, sat down and packed my suitcase for me," she said.

Asked why so many of Cruz's Senate colleagues appear to dislike him despite the image of the kinder, gentler man she portrayed, Cruz responded that "those that say they dislike him are the very ones that the American people are trying to vote out of office.”

Cruz, she continued, "is fighting for the American people, and they want him to be unwavering."