Cruz: Gun photo sums up media's view of conservatives

Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz responded Tuesday to an Associated Press photo that juxtaposed a poster of a pistol with the presidential hopeful's head.

The photo, taken at a Des Moines-area shooting range Saturday, raised some controversy online. Some criticized the photo as an example of liberal bias from the AP and other media sites.

Cruz sided with that view when asked to respond on the Mark Levin Show, a conservative radio show. In his response, Cruz likened members of the press to the bodyguards that used to protect rulers of the Roman empire.

"As you know the mainstream media, they are not objective reporters," Cruz told Levin. "They are hardcore leftists and partisans, they are Barack Obama's most important Praetorian Guard and no one is more ready for Hillary than the mainstream media, so it is not surprising to see ..."

In a statement released earlier this week, the AP said "The images were not intended to portray Sen. Cruz in a negative light."

The Des Moines Register covered Saturday's event and a Register photographer took a similar photo.

An email sent Monday to a Cruz spokeswoman seeking a response to the photo was not returned.

Here is Cruz's full response regarding the photo on the Mark Levin Show:

"There's no doubt that if they had run the same photo and it had been Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, that the entire world would have recoiled in horror and the editor who made the decision to run it would very likely have been fired and there would have been a public apology.

This is business as usual. As you know the mainstream media, they are not objective reporters. They are hardcore leftists and partisans, they are Barack Obama's most important Praetorian Guard and no one is more ready for Hillary than the mainstream media, so it is not surprising to see.

You know, I've kind of enjoyed some of the contrast of all of the AP photos of Barack Obama with a halo of lights behind his head versus me with a giant gun pointed between my eyes because that sums up their views of you and me and conservatives and frankly of Americans. They view hardworking men and women all across this country — people who believe in the values, the Judeo-Christian values, the free market, people who believe in the Constitution — they view us as ignorant rubes and that's their hostility coming out. That is the nature of who they are, they are partisans."