Donald Trump gestures to the crowd gathered in front of the Trump Tower ahead of the passing of pope's motorcade. AP Photo/Kevin Hagen Real-estate mogul Donald Trump said he would embrace "New York values" after Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) suggested that voters in Iowa should think about the billionaire businessman's hometown.

"When people want to knock New York — first of all you shouldn't be doing it, because you have a massive population there — but when you want to knock New York, you've got to go through me. New York is an amazing place with amazing people," Trump said in a Bloomberg Politics interview published Thursday morning.

Trump, who was born in Queens and lives in Manhattan, touted how his city responded to the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.

"We took a big hit with the World Trade Center — worst thing ever, worst attack ever in the United States, worse than Pearl Harbor because they attacked civilians," he said. "They attacked people having breakfast. And frankly if you would've been there, and if you would've lived through that like I did with New York people — the way they handled that attack was one of the most incredible things that anybody has ever seen."

The Republican presidential front-runner added: "Very few cities could have handled it like that."

Earlier this week, the lengthy détente between Trump and Cruz shattered after a relentless attack from Trump on Cruz's birthplace in Canada. Although many legal experts believe Cruz's American mother means he meets the US Constitution's "natural-born" citizen requirement for presidents, Trump has suggested daily that Cruz could be ineligible for the Oval Office.

Cruz had a number of responses, including that Democrats want Trump to win the Republican nomination because they think he'd be easier to beat in the general election. One of Cruz's apparent jabs was at Trump's own birthplace, New York City.

"Donald comes from New York and he embodies New York values. And listen, The Donald seems to be a little bit rattled," Cruz said Tuesday on radio host Howie Carr's show.

Fox News host Megyn Kelly, calling herself a lifelong New Yorker, then confronted Cruz during an interview and asked him what he meant by "New York Values." But Cruz wouldn't elaborate.

"I'll tell you: The rest of the country knows exactly what 'New York values' are, and I got to say they're not Iowa values and they're not New Hampshire values," he told Kelly.

However, RealClearPolitics reported that supporters of Cruz conducted a message-testing poll Monday in Iowa that asked respondents to evaluate various lines of attack against Trump. One of them called Trump "a New York liberal pretending to have conservative values."