Cruz's dad: Return Obama to Kenya

A video from a North Texas tea party event in 2012 shows Sen. Ted Cruz’s father, Pastor Rafael Cruz, telling conservatives he’d like to send Obama “back to Kenya.”

The Sept. 12, 2012, clip, surfaced by Mother Jones as part of a longer piece on Cruz published Thursday, shows the elder Cruz telling tea partiers that the administration is “pushing very hard for the United Nations to have taxing authority.”


“Part of this administration’s agenda is to make us a third world country and to make us sucked in to the United Nations. It’s all about the global distribution of wealth,” he says.

( PHOTOS: Key quotes from Ted Cruz)

“So I’ll tell you, we have our work cut out for us. We need to send Barack Obama back to Chicago. I’d like to send him back to Kenya,” he tells the crowd, which erupts into cheers.

Cruz spokesman Sean Rushton said in a statement that the Kenya quotes were taken out of context, mischaracterizing the pastor’s message, and that “Pastor Cruz does not speak for the senator.”

As the Dallas Morning News reports, Cruz had deployed his father as a surrogate many times throughout his Senate campaign.