“Sometimes the debate moderators are dwelling on issues that are not front and center," Ted Cruz said. | Getty Cruz to debate moderators: No birther questions, please

Ted Cruz has an ask for Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz for Sunday night’s debate: Please, no more birther talk.

In an interview on Friday, the Texas senator urged the debate moderators to keep the conversation away from nonpolicy issues like Trump's past questioning of the president's birthplace, which Cruz insists “voters don’t give a flying flip about.” Sunday's debate in St. Louis will be a town hall format, but Cooper and Raddatz do have some sway to guide the conversation.


“Sometimes the debate moderators are dwelling on issues that are not front and center, such as the first presidential debate where we spent a great deal of time talking about the birther nonsense,” Cruz said as he left the Capitol for a flight home to Texas. “There wasn’t a single question about the Supreme Court."



The fate of the high court is a priority for Cruz. He reversed his pointed non-endorsement for Trump at the GOP convention late last month, citing Trump’s list of conservative potential Supreme Court justices as a major reason for the decision. His close friend, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), was floated as a potential justice just hours before Cruz announced he would vote for Trump.

But the Supreme Court has not yet come up in the debates, even as Senate Republicans block President Barack Obama from filling the vacancy left by Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. Many Republicans have come to back Trump because of the Supreme Court issue, reasoning that the entire court would be transformed if Hillary Clinton is elected and gets to appoint probably several new justices.

"Our religious liberty, our free speech, our Second Amendment [rights] all hang in the balance this election. Not a word of that was asked about the first debate. I hope that changes going forward," Cruz said.

The GOP senator also aired a frustration shared by many Republicans that the first debate was not held on fertile ground for his party. He hopes the candidates are pressed on the increasingly balky Obamacare system, particularly after “even Bill Clinton was forced to admit that it’s a crazy system.” Clinton later clarified that he supports the Affordable Care Act even though it needs improvement, but many Republicans are hoping that Trump will use his debate platform to attack the law just as premiums rise and some insurers pull out of state exchanges.

"His wife, Hillary Clinton, is running [on] promising to keep Obamacare and expand it and make it worse,” Cruz said. “Instead of focusing on the nonsense [at the debate], we ought to be focusing more on the people who are hurting right now.”