http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/271975-cruz-media-is-sitting-on-bombshells-about-donald-trumpMarch 06, 2016, 12:03 pm
Cruz: Media is sitting on bombshells about Donald Trump
By Rebecca Savransky
Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) said on Sunday that the media is sitting on explosive negative information about front-runner Donald Trump with plans to run it later in the year to tear the candidate apart.
"I think an awful lot of reporters — I can't tell you how many media outlets I hear, you know, have this great exposé on Donald, on different aspects of his business dealings or his past, but they said, 'You know what? We're going to hold it to June or July,'" Cruz said on CBS's "Face The Nation" Sunday.
"We're not going to run it now."
Cruz said the media has given the front-runner "hundreds of millions of dollars of free advertising." Every press conference Trump has is shown on every television station, he said, noting the media helped create this "phenomenon."
"And all of the attacks on Donald that the media is not talking about now, you'd better believe come September, October, November — if he were the nominee — every day on the nightly news would be taking Donald apart," he said.
Cruz called out the media, saying one of the reasons they want Trump to be the eventual nominee is because they know he can't beat Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton.
"Hillary would wallop him," Cruz said.
"Donald may be the only person on the face of the planet that Hillary Clinton can beat."
Cruz addressed the fact that people haven't brought up the issue of Trump's tax returns recently, questioning why it wasn't mentioned during the recent Republican debate.
"As Mitt Romney rightly observed, the fact that Donald won't hand over his tax returns suggests there's a bombshell in there," Cruz said.
He also called out journalists for not talking more about what Trump may have told The New York Times editorial board in an off-the-record portion of an interview. The Times recently refused to release an audio recording from an off-the-record meeting with Trump in which some speculated the front-runner talked about immigration.
When the general election comes, Cruz said Trump will be the "singular focus of the media."
"And I think Republicans, we've been burned by that before," Cruz said.
"We're not interested in losing again, particularly when the stakes, I think, are catastrophic."
