Indiana

Ted Cruz says Donald Trump winning would be like 'Biff Tannen' presidency

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on campaign 2016 as voters in Indiana head to the polls for the state primary (all times Eastern):

11:30 a.m.

Ted Cruz is launching a blistering attack on his rival Donald Trump, saying that if Indiana lets Trump win Tuesday’s presidential primary, America is “looking, potentially, at the Biff Tannen” presidency, a reference to the 1980’s film “Back to the Future.”

“We are not a proud, boastful, self-centered, mean spirited, hateful, bullying nation,” Cruz told reporters in Evansville, Indiana, before citing the film “Back to the Future II.” The film’s screenwriter said in an interview with The Daily Beast last year that the film’s character Biff Tannen was based on Trump.

“The screenwriter says that he based the character Biff Tannen on Donald Trump — a character of a braggadocios, arrogant buffoon who builds giant casinos with giant pictures of him everywhere he looks,” Cruz said. “We are looking, potentially, at the Biff Tannen presidency.”

Cruz also denounced accusations Trump made Tuesday about his father, Rafael Cruz, that he was acquainted with John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, calling his dad “my hero.”

9:55 a.m.

Republican front-runner Donald Trump is resurrecting accusations against rival Ted Cruz’s father, Rafael Cruz, saying that he was with President John F. Kennedy’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald prior to his death.

“The whole thing is ridiculous,” Trump said on Fox & Friends Tuesday ahead of the Indiana primary. “Right prior to his being shot, and nobody brings it up. They don’t even talk about that.”

A recent National Enquirer report claimed that the elder Cruz appeared in a 1963 photo of Oswald as he handed out leaflets for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

The Cruz campaign has denied the accusations.

8:35 a.m.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz is a no-show at a morning campaign stop outside of Indianapolis.

Cruz was supposed to campaign alongside his wife Heidi and running mate Carly Fiorina at a pancake restaurant Tuesday as voters were set to vote in the state’s crucial primary. But 30 minutes before the scheduled start of the event, Cruz’s campaign said the senator would not be there.

Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said they made a mistake in saying originally that he would be there. Cruz is slated to make a campaign stop in the southern Indiana city of Evansville later Tuesday morning, then he will take the afternoon off before his primary night gathering in Indianapolis.

Fiorina and Heidi Cruz did show up to shake hands and talk with diners.

Cruz has said he plans to continue his campaign even if he loses Indiana, a state where he’s focused resources and spent most of his time the past two weeks trying to win in an effort to stop front runner Donald Trump. But polls show Trump leading heading into Election Day.

7:45 a.m.

Hillary Clinton’s supporters say she may have offended voters in politically important coal country with what she acknowledge was a misstatement — but at least she’s willing to acknowledge her own mistakes. Donald Trump, they say, “never apologizes for anything.”

Clinton has spent recent days West Virginia and Kentucky being heckled and explaining that she had made a “misstatement” in March when she said in an interview on CNN that she would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” She was responding to a question about how her policies would benefit poor white people in Southern states. She said Monday that “whether people vote for me or not, whether they yell at me or not, it’s not going to affect what I will do to help.”

Democratic National Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz told CNN Tuesday that Clinton didn’t change the substance of her plans for poor people in the region, adding that “when you say something that comes out in a hurtful way” it helps to let them know you still care about them.

Democratic strategist Brad Woodhouse added on the same network that the episode showed that Clinton is “someone who’s willing to admit a misstatement.” He said Trump, on the other hand, “is someone who never apologizes for anything.”

3:30 a.m.

Republican Ted Cruz faces a high-stakes test for his slumping presidential campaign in Tuesday’s Indiana primary, one of the last opportunities for the Texas senator to halt Donald Trump’s stunning march toward the GOP nomination.

Cruz has spent the past week camped out in Indiana, securing the support of the state’s governor and announcing retired technology executive Carly Fiorina as his running mate.

Yet his aides were pessimistic heading into Tuesday’s voting and were prepared for Cruz to fall short, though the senator vowed to stay in the race, regardless of the results.

While Trump cannot clinch the nomination with a big win in Indiana, his path would get easier and he would have more room for error in the campaign’s final contests.

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