Troy Newman, the head of Operation Rescue, has long been known as one of the most radical anti-choice activists in the country, saying that a just government would execute abortion providers and organizing efforts to harass abortion providers and their patients.

But Ted Cruz apparently saw his extremism as a boon, releasing a statement on November 19th touting Newman’s endorsement of his presidential campaign and declaring that America needs more “leaders like Troy Newman.”

In his statement, Cruz made clear that he was touting Newman’s endorsement because of the activist’s role in creating the hoax videos smearing Planned Parenthood for selling “baby parts” for profits. Following the shooting at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic on Friday, the shooter reportedly told authorities “no more baby parts” after he was apprehended.

Newman has not only opined on the governments duty of “executing convicted murderers, including abortionists, for their crimes in order to expunge bloodguilt from the land and people,” but once even claimed that the murderer of an abortion doctor and his bodyguard was a “political prisoner” and victim of “judicial tyranny,” since he was deprived of his “right to present a defense that claimed that the killing of the abortionist was necessary to save the lives of the pre-born babies that were scheduled to be killed by abortion that day.”

Newman coauthored his book calling for the execution of abortion providers and the statement defending the anti-abortion terrorist with his Operation Rescue colleague Cheryl Sullenger, who served “time in jail for conspiring to bomb a California abortion clinic in the 1980s” but who has since renounced violence.

Newman denounced the Planned Parenthood shooting in Colorado Springs, but his extremist rhetoric towards abortion providers speaks for itself. For example, “Newman has claimed that the 9/11 terrorist attacks and AIDS were both warnings from God about legal abortion in America and attributed a drought in California to the state’s liberal abortion laws, insisting that ‘weather patterns’ and economic instability are connected to legal abortion.”

Another activist whose endorsement Cruz’s campaign recently touted, Flip Benham, was convicted of stalking an abortion provider “after passing out hundreds of ‘wanted’ posters with the physician’s name and photo on it.”

As Rachel Maddow explained in a recent program, Cruz must explain why he would hail an activist like Newman, a point that speaks volumes following last week’s Planned Parenthood attack.