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Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) stumbled and fumbled when confronted with his lack of qualifications to be president by CNN.

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Transcript via CNN:

BASH: You talk about sticking to principles and defending principles. Obviously that is your calling card. But if you were to achieve the next level, the presidency of the United States, you have to get beyond that and you have to really learn how to compromise.

Give me an example where you have successfully compromised in the United States Senate with Democrats.

CRUZ: Well, if you look at some of the legislation that has passed — that I’ve been able to pass when I was there, for example, if you look to about a year ago when Iran named Hamid Aboutalebi as their ambassador to the U. N., he was a known terrorist, he had participated in holding Americans hostage, and that was intended to be and was in fact a slap in the face to the United States.

I introduced legislation barring Aboutalebi from being admitted to this country. And it had earned the support from senators as varied as Lindsey Graham and Chuck Schumer. It passed the Senate 100 to nothing. It went to the House. It passed the House 435 to nothing, and president Obama signed it into law. And so we were able to get unanimity, bipartisan agreement and to change the law to keep Aboutalebi and keep other known terrorists from coming to this country from being in New York City with diplomatic immunity.

BASH: But you yourself made the point. I mean, 100 to nothing it has got to be something incredibly noncontroversial.

CRUZ: Well but – it doesn’t mean unimportant. I’ll give you another example of leading and finding issues that can bring —

BASH: Because I believe that might be the only legislation that you have your name on as a co-sponsor that was successful in the legislature.

CRUZ: Well, I’ll give you another example which is — you’ll recall last year when three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and murdered by Hamas. And I joined with New Jersey senator, Democrat Bob Menendez in introducing legislation to provide for a $5 million reward in the state department for information leading to the capture of the terrorist who kidnapped and murdered Naftali Fraenkel who was a dual American-Israeli citizen.

Now, Bob Menendez and I did that together. That, likewise, passed the Senate 100 to nothing. It would have passed the House but thankfully they caught the terrorist before the House passed it.

And in fact I’ll point to another example, which is I joined with New York Democrat, Kirsten Gillibrand, in passing a resolution through the Senate condemning Hamas’ use of human shields. Again, we got it unanimously passed —

BASH: But it’s fair that there’s just one piece of legislation that is now law with your name on it.

CRUZ: Well, that’s accurate, but — look, in the Harry Reid Senate we passed next to nothing. Harry Reid and the Democrats basically shut down the Senate. And I can tell you the two things that I have passed the Senate, the two pieces of legislation that passed the Senate are more than all but a handful of Republicans in the last two years and that was despite Senate Democrats basically shutting the Senate down so that almost nothing could pass.

Cruz tried to justify his lack of accomplishment by rewriting President Obama’s biography to elimate the time that he spent as a state senator. In Cruz’s revised Obama bio, the president went from being a community organizer to occupying the White House.

Dana Bash did an effective job of questioning Cruz about his weak spots, and the Texas Senator’s defense consisted of blaming Senate Democrats and lying about President Obama. Ted Cruz isn’t qualified to be president. Cruz is running what is amounting to a vanity campaign that is centering on advancing his own celebrity. Cruz isn’t as qualified as Obama was before he ran for president, and CNN isn’t playing along with inflating a 2016 pretender to the status of a legitimate candidate.