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Donald Trump Calls Ted Cruz A ‘Total Liar’ & A ‘Nasty Guy’ A Day Before Iowa Caucus

By Patricia Grannum
Published on: 08:15 PST, Jan 31, 2016

Donald Trump is lashing out at his closest rival for the Republican presidential nomination, Ted Cruz, and it’s not pretty, USA Today reports.

On the Sunday morning talk show circuit, the real estate mogul and former host of The Apprentice called Cruz a “total liar” and a “nasty guy.” Trump focused on Cruz’s finances, his likeability, and the fact that he was born in Canada. Ted Cruz also took shots at Trump on the Sunday morning talk shows. So, it seemed as though the two politicians were debating with each other, even though they weren’t in the same room.

“Here’s a guy with all of these senators. Not one endorsement of Cruz, because he’s a nasty guy. Nobody likes him,” Donald Trump said in his interview with ABC’s This Week. “You can’t run a country that way. It will be a total mess. It will be worse gridlock than you have right now.”

As for Ted Cruz, he pointed out that Donald Trump has also had financial trouble, so he has no right to target his finances.

“For someone who owes of hundreds of millions of dollars if not billions of dollars, to attack Heidi and me because we put our life savings into running for Senate, and a statement that the loans weren’t disclosed, he knows that’s flat-out false. The loans were disclosed,” Cruz said on Fox News Sunday.

The Ted Cruz finances issue revolves around the fact that he allegedly received a million dollar loan from Goldman Sachs that he failed to disclose when he was running for senator in 2012. This story was revealed in a report from the New York Times.

As Newsweek reports, this could prove to be a problem for Cruz’s race to the presidency, because he has declared himself to be an opponent of Wall Street, as he has insisted that he opposed the banking industry bailouts that happened after the recession.

But as USA Today notes, Ted Cruz isn’t backing down from Donald Trump’s taunts about his presidential run, and has called him out for degrading the race with his petty insults.

“I think the American people deserve more than just a battle of petty insults. And so I don’t intend to play that game,” Cruz said to CNN’s State of the Union on his campaign bus.

He also accused Donald Trump of having the same position as Bernie Sanders when it comes to healthcare.

“They both support socialized medicine, expanding Obamacare to put the government in charge of our health care,” Cruz said on CNN.

But Trump accused Cruz of fabricating that entire story.

“Ted Cruz is a total liar,” Trump said in an interview with CBS. “I am so against Obamacare. I’ve been saying it for two years in my speeches, I’m going to repeal and replace Obamacare.”

All of this back and forth between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz comes one day before the Iowa caucus. Trump is currently the frontrunner, and it looks like that’s a surprise to even him, ABC News reports.

“Did you ever imagine then that on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, you’d be leading — leading pretty big in every state?” This Week host George Stephanopoulos asked Trump.

“The truth is, no, I didn’t,” Trump replied. “I’m somebody that knows how to win. I close the deal. But I never thought I’d have 24 point leads in different states.”

As ABC News notes, Trump who has no actual work experience at any level of government has not received any endorsements from a sitting member of Congress or the Senate.

But Trump maintains that that isn’t a problem for him, since he’s expecting those endorsements to come through soon.

“I have great endorsements,” Trump said, adding that “many, many more are coming.”

[Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images]

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