priority is saving these he d.r.e.a.m.ers? i want a bill of love? you heard him say that. he told america. he did tell them that and then he rejected the deal that was the closest thing to a bill of love two days later. yeah. but the bill that came to him two days later was filled with deal breakers. it checked out every box. it was a poison bill. it had lindsey graham and other republicans behind it. it checked every box. lindsey graham. you keep going to lindsey graham. he is not an indication that there is widespread support of anything, chris. he s a legitimate voice in opposition, a legitimate critic of the president and doesn t represent the majority in congress. when the president does the right thing, he s i with him. some call that leadership. mitch mcconnell, the leader of the republicans in the senate says he doesn t know what the president wants either. michael, you make the case.
legalization for illegal aliens. i always have and i always will. so game on, jackie, between the two candidates and a lot of political insiders felt will be there at the issue that political insiders will tell you is one thing that might be decided on between them. rubio did a good job of putting cruz on the defensive the entire week. particularly with the 2013 amendment to the immigration bill that rubio introduced. it looked like cruz might be supporting a not a pathway to citizenship but a way for people to stay out of the country who aren t supposed to be here. he spent the week explaining it was a poison bill. it was this and that. putting cruz on the defensive for immigration is good for rubio. are these not shark-infested waters for rubio? that s exactly right. and if you look out to iowa any conversation about the issue of
cruz has said about being opposed to legalization, to amnesty. here s what i believe happened, and that is he offered an amendment that drew a bright line in blocking citizenship as being a component of the gang of eight bill. when he did that, what was left in the bill was legalization because you couldn t divide legalization from citizenship any other way. and his argument was a rhetorical argument to convince the other side to vote for his amendment. i ve done that a number of times myself. anybody in this arena knows that. marco rubio s got to know that. here s the deciding line. if you want to if you wonder what it really meant, ted cruz never said, i ll vote for the bill if my amendment passes. had he said that, then he might be able to make this argument, but he did not. he was simply trying to get his amendment to pass because it was a poison bill in the bill. it s complicated washington speak but he was supporting an amendment for legalization.
they are both going to be tough on immigration going forward, each of them potentially has a problem with this issue in this race. erin? thank you, tom. now, political commentator and the former communication center for ted cruz, amanda carpenter and matt lewis. his wife was a former consultant for cruz s senate campaign. good to have both of you with me. do you believe ted cruz s explanation for his apparent flip-flop on the issue? no. no, i don t. these are the facts. during the debate he said he never supported legalization and doesn t intend to support it in the future. as we just saw in that segment, in 2013, just two years ago, he did in fact introduce an amendment that would legalize illegals. now, at the time, he was pressed by conservatives like byron york, a conservative writer for the washington examiner, and robby george, a highly respective conservative at princeton. they pressed him. is this a poison bill?
apart. you also supported mass legalization. cruz is claiming i never did. that is not the case. cruz did. he proposed it. he advocated for it. he said it was a solution to fix the problem. by playing this particular game and doubling down on the claim he never supported something that he did, he s creating an opening for attack. what his supporters say is the intent behind that amendment was a poison bill. it was to expose the democrats and help kill the bill. that s not what he said at the time. he said it was a good faith effort. if that s not the case he was appealing to good faith effort in bad faith, which is not a good look.