Ted Cruz: 'Men Should Not Be Going to the Bathroom With Little Girls'

"I’m not terribly excited about men being able to go alone into a bathroom with my daughters,” the candidate says in an MSNBC town hall.

Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz today expressed support for anti-transgender “bathroom bills” like the one recently enacted in North Carolina.

“As the father of daughters, I’m not terribly excited about men being able to go alone into a bathroom with my daughters,” Cruz told NBC’s Chuck Todd during a taping of a town hall meeting in Buffalo, N.Y., that will air on MSNBC tonight.

Cruz, of course, was misgendering trans women and playing into the thoroughly discredited notion that they somehow present a danger to women and girls, or that people would pretend to be transgender in order to gain access to these facilities. “Men should not be going to the bathroom with little girls,” he further noted. “That is a perfectly reasonable determination for the people to make.”

There has been much backlash against the North Carolina law, which bars transgender people from using the restrooms, locker rooms, and other sex-segregated facilities (in government-owned buildings, including public schools) that comport with their gender identity. The law, passed in March, also repealed LGBT-inclusive municipal nondiscrimination ordinances throughout the state and prevented cities or counties from enacting new ones. It came in reaction to an ordinance adopted in Charlotte.

Cruz claimed that the backlash was based in “political correctness,” and he blamed the Obama administration, which has held that federal laws banning sex discrimination apply to discrimination based on gender identity.

“Listen, the Obama Education Department is going against a junior high insisting that the junior high must allow a teenage boy to shower with teenage girls,” the Texas senator told Todd, perhaps referring to a case involving a high school in Illinois and ignoring the fact that privacy measures are in place. “Now, that’s just nuts. I mean, that’s not a reasonable decision. That’s crazy!”

Cruz declined to comment on an executive order signed by North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory this week to clarify the law and to protect employees of state government from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The candidate said he wasn’t familiar with the details.

The town hall, coming five days before New York State holds its presidential primary, will air at 8 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC.