Seth Meyers turned a segment about Sen. Ted Cruz's optimistic outlook on the midterm elections into a bizarre recollection of the GOP lawmaker's relationship with President Donald Trump.
Meyers Highlights Cruz's Gas Price Comment
The "Late Night" host played a clip of Cruz saying the "president has made America safer" through his war against Iran. "I don't think it's gonna impact the midterms," the Texas Republican said of the high fuel costs generated by the conflict.
Meyers Shares Personal Anecdote
But Meyers provided his own father as a counterexample. "When gas goes over $4 a gallon, he blows up my phone like an angry girlfriend."
Recalling Trump's Conspiracy Theory
"And by the way, Ted Cruz, I know you have a dad because he helped kill JFK, according to Donald Trump," the host cracked. "That's a real thing Donald Trump said in 2016," Meyers pointed out. "It caused the Cruz campaign to issue a statement that 'Trump is detached from reality, and his false, cheap, meaningless comments every day indicate his desperation to get attention and willingness to say anything to do so.'"
"Man," Meyers reflected, "You read that, and you think a lot has changed in the last 10 years."
Background on the Conspiracy
In 2016, Trump regurgitated a National Enquirer report that suggested Cruz's father, Rafael Cruz, was an associate of Lee Harvey Oswald, the man charged with killing President John F. Kennedy. The tabloid ran a purported photo of Cruz with Oswald handing out anti-Fidel Castro literature in 1963. The Cruz campaign said it wasn't Rafael Cruz in the photo and called the story "garbage." David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer, later conceded the story was fake.
