In the wake of the horrific Islamic terror attack in Brussels, Belgium that claimed the lives of 30 people, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz made the point that now is not the time to abandon NATO, despite comments to that effect made by Donald Trump reported just yesterday.

Brussels is where NATO is headquartered, and is also significant for being the capital of the European Union. Without NATO, Europe will be left virtually defenseless against Russian military aggression.

The Washington Post delved into Donald Trump’s “unabashedly noninterventionist” foreign policy strategy yesterday. Trump questioned the wisdom of U.S. involvement in NATO, which he said “may need to be significantly diminished in the coming years, breaking with nearly seven decades of consensus in Washington.”

Trump was quoted as saying,

“NATO is costing us a fortune, and yes, we’re protecting Europe with NATO, but we’re spending a lot of money.”

Not surprisingly, Vladimir Putin also wants NATO to go away.

Just last month, the U.K.-based Telegraph reported that events in Syria pose “a direct threat to European security, combining the dangers of terrorism with the risk of direct conflict between Nato and Russia.”

In the wake of the attacks in Brussels, Ted Cruz said in part:

“Donald Trump is wrong that America should withdraw from the world and abandon our allies. Donald Trump is wrong that American should retreat from Europe, retreat from NATO, hand Putin a major victory and while he’s at it hand ISIS a major victory.”

Trumpsters, of course, took Cruz’s comments as a personal insult to Trump, saying that Cruz “blamed” Trump for the Islamic terror attack in Brussels.

Pro-Putin conspiracy theorists InfoWars posted a video quoting Cruz saying “It is striking that the day after Donald Trump called for weakening NATO, withdrawing from NATO, we see Brussels, where NATO is headquartered, the subject of a radical Islamic terror attack.”

The video left out the rest of Cruz’s quote stating that Trump is “wrong that American should retreat from Europe, retreat from NATO, hand Putin a major victory and while he’s at it hand ISIS a major victory.”

Watch:

Our friend “sundance” from the Conservative Tree House who has previously promoted demonstrably fake stories about Ted Cruz wrote in an article called “A New Low – Senator Ted Cruz Blames Donald Trump for Brussels Terrorist Attacks (video)…” that Cruz had “the unbelievable audacity to rush to the microphones and blame presidential candidate Donald Trump for the Brussels terrorist attacks earlier today.” Sundance continued desperately:

“Don’t try to obfuscate his words and claim he didn’t, it’s right there in the video.”

Sundance, of course, used Alex Jones’ cherry picked video.

Clash Daily also repeated the lie, declaring that Ted Cruz “blamed Donald Trump instead [of Islamic terrorists]” for the Brussels terror attack.

The lie is being reported as fact all over social media. Perhaps engaged readers can take the time to respond to some of those repeating the lie with this article.