Newsweek has issued an apology after senior writer Alexander Nazaryan compared Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz and his supporters to Nazis.

“I would like to express on behalf of Newsweek our disappointment that this occurred and reiterate that this does not align with our editorial values,” Newsweek’s editor-in-chief, Jim Impoco, told the Washington Examiner in a statement.

“I apologize for any doubt that this might have cast on Newsweek’s editorial integrity or credibility. We’ve addressed the situation with Alexander and the rest of the staff and will be reviewing and reiterating our social media policy in coming days.”

Mr. Nazaryan tweeted, then promptly deleted, an image Wednesday morning depicting Nazi soldiers, writing, “Ted Cruz has a strong ground game in Iowa.”

Facing a wave of social media backlash from conservatives, Mr. Nazaryan later tweeted, “I deleted my tweet calling Ted Cruz a Nazi. Not fair to his totally decent supporters, as much as I dislike the man himself.”

Mr. Nazaryan publicly expressed his disdain for the Texas senator just a day earlier, calling him “an atrocity of a human being.”

Faced with calls for him to resign or be fired, Mr. Nazaryan wrote: “Because part of my job is having opinions. One opinion I have is that Ted Cruz would be a very bad president.”

According to Mr. Nazaryan’s staff page at Newsweek, he was previously on the editorial board of the New York Daily News.

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