In the latest in a string of incendiary and often conspiratorial comments, Donald Trump on Tuesday linked Ted Cruz’s father to President John F. Kennedy’s assassin.
Trump, on the day Indiana went to the polls, repeated assertions made by the National Enquirer that the Cuban-born Raphael Cruz was pictured with Lee Harvey Oswald handing out pro-Cuba pamphlets in New Orleans in 1963.
"I mean, what was he doing — what was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death? Before the shooting?" Trump asked in an interview with Fox News. "It’s horrible."
Cruz’s campaign called the article “garbage.”
From Muslims celebrating en masse after the World Trade Center fell to disparaging the qualifications of his rivals for the presidency, here are some of Trump’s most provocative statements.
"Thousands of people were cheering"
Trump claimed to have seen thousands of Muslims rejoicing in Jersey City when the Twin Towers fell during the 2001 terrorist attacks.
"Hey, I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down," he said at a rally in Alabama in November. "And I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down."
U.S. & World
News from around the country and around the globe
"So something’s going on," he said. "We’ve got to find out what it is."
There were no verified reports of mass jubilation on Sept. 11 — though NJ.com found some residents and a police officer who said they saw small groups of people celebrating.
Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop tweeted that Trump’s statement was "absurd."
Cruz’s Canadian birth
Before the Iowa caucuses, Trump speculated that Cruz was not eligible to run for president because he was born in Calgary, Canada, and had held both American and Canadian citizenship.
According to the Constitution, the president must be a "natural born citizen" though it does not specify what that term means.
The Texas Republican is a U.S. citizen because his mother is one — and some scholars say the Constitutional issue is not settled.
In February, angry over ads, Trump threatened to sue Cruz.
And what about Rubio?
In another tweet in February, Trump raised questions about whether Marco Rubio could run for the White House. But the Florida senator, who has since dropped out of the race, was born in Miami, though to parents who had immigrated from Cuba.
Trump claimed simply to have retweeted an argument that neither Rubio nor Cruz were eligible.
"I've never looked at it, George," Trump told George Stephanopoulos, on ABC’s "This Week." "I honestly have never looked at it. As somebody said, he's not. And I retweeted it. I have 14 million people between Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, and I retweet things and we start dialogue and it's very interesting."
Born in Kenya?
Trump’s birther claims began with President Barack Obama in 2012, when the New York businessman repeatedly questioned whether Obama was indeed born in the United States. At one of his campaign events, he allowed a false claim that Obama is Muslim to go unchallenged.
Pigs blood
Another discredited story that Trump repeats: Gen. John Pershing shot Muslim extremists in the Philippines with bullets dipped in pigs' blood.
