On the day of Indiana crucial primary election, the US Republican race slipped to gutter fight once again as front runner Donald Trump linked the father of rival Ted Cruz with Lee Oswald, the assassin of John F. Kennedy.
In a television appearance , Trump said Rafael Cruz was linked to Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, citing a report by National Enquirer, a supermarket tabloid known for celebrity gossip and alien sightings.
“You know, his father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald’s being – you know, shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous. What is this, right prior to his being shot, and nobody brings it up,” Trump said on Fox.
The accusation enraged Cruz like the previous unsubstantiated allegation of the extra-marital affairs of Cruz.
The Texas senator lashed out at Trump calling him a pathological liar, narcissist and bully.
“I’m going to tell you what I really think of Donald Trump. This man is a pathological liar. He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies,” Cruz told reporters in a scathing indictment on Tuesday.
“He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. And … his response is to accuse everybody else of lying.”
Cruz denounced the Enquirer and its chief executive, David Pecker, who has endorsed Trump, for claiming his father, a Cuban immigrant to the United States, was pictured handing out pro-Fidel Castro literature with Oswald in New Orleans in 1963.
“Yes, my dad killed JFK, he is secretly Elvis and Jimmy Hoffa is buried in his back yard,” Cruz said in a sarcastic retort.
Despite the tiff, Republicans in Indiana might give Trump an almost unstoppable advantage in his turbulent journey toward the party’s presidential nomination.
The real estate mogul holds a double-digit polling lead in the Midwestern state over Cruz, a US Senator of Texas.