Trump, Cruz exchange barbs over Cruz’s Canadian birth

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. - Republican front-runner Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz had a long - and sometimes surreal - argument Thursday evening about whether Cruz was even eligible to run for president, with Trump telling Cruz 'there's a big question mark on your head, and you can't do that to the party.”

'Who the hell knows if you can run for office?” Trump said.

The exchange took several minutes of the sixth GOP presidential debate. It also demonstrated the danger - even for a skillful debater like Cruz - of tangling with Trump, a trained master of reality TV. It began with a question for Cruz, who was born in Canada to an American mother, about whether he fit the Constitution's definition of a 'natural born” American citizen, and was eligible to run for president. He said that Trump had dismissed the idea earlier in the race but now was suddenly concerned.

'The Constitution hasn't changed. But the poll numbers have. And I recognize that Donald is dismayed that his poll numbers are falling,” Cruz said.

That set off a long exchange in which Trump admitted he had, indeed, become more concerned because of Cruz's rise in the polls. 'Because now he's doing a little bit better. You know, I didn't care before,” Trump said, although he also reminded Cruz that he was still ahead in the polls. 'He's got probably a four or five percent chance” of winning the race. Trump imagined a scenario in which Trump himself might choose Cruz as a running mate, 'And the Democrats sue because we can't take him along for the ride. I don't like that.”

'I'm not going to be taking legal advice from Donald Trump,” Cruz, a Harvard Law graduate and former Supreme Court clerk, responded. Cruz said that maybe he would make Trump a vice president, which means he could benefit if Cruz was disqualified: 'You can get the top job at the end of the day.”

Eventually, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) butted in. 'I hate to interrupt this episode of Court TV.”

Earlier in the debate, Trump called Syrian refugees a 'Trojan horse” that brought terrorist sympathizers into the

U.S. 'It's reality. You just have to look today at Indonesia. Bombings all over. You look at California. You look, frankly, at Paris,” Trump said when asked about a refugee that President Barack Obama had invited as his guest to the State of the Union. Trump said that refugee's sympathetic story was not typical: 'That's not representative of what you have in that line of migration. That could be the great Trojan horse.”

Trump has said that he wants a temporary ban on all Muslim foreigners seeking to enter the U.S., and a wall to keep out undocumented immigrants along the border with Mexico. He did not appear to have changed that tactic: 'We can't let all these people come into our country and break our borders. We can't do it.”

Later in the debate, broadcast on Fox Business Network, Cruz was asked about a New York Times report that he had failed to disclose loans made to him by Citibank and Goldman Sachs with election officials, while he ran for the Senate from Texas in 2012. Cruz later disclosed the information with Senate authorities. He rejected it as a 'hit piece.”

'Yes, I made a paperwork error, disclosing it on one piece of paper instead of the other. But if that's the best that the New York Times has got, they'd better go back to the well,” Cruz said.

Cruz began the night by criticizing Obama for failing to mention the 10 U.S. sailors who were seized - and later released - by Iranian forces in the Persian Gulf, calling it evidence of Obama's weakness.

'We were horrified to see the sight of 10 American sailors on their knees with their hands on their head. In that state of the union, President Barack Obama didn't so much as mention those 10 sailors,” Cruz said, ignoring - for the moment - the fact that he had actually been asked about jobs. 'It was heartbreaking. But the good news is the next commander in chief is standing on this stage.”

The sailors were later released by Iran, and the Pentagon said Thursday that they had entered Iranian territorial waters by mistake after a navigational error. But Cruz said that the sailors' treatment - including the release of footage that showed them with hands on their heads as they were taken into custody - would have drawn a sharper response from a President Cruz.

'Any nation that captures our fighting men will feel the full force and fury of the United States of America,” Cruz said.

Later, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie criticized Obama for underplaying the threats to the U.S.: 'I watched story time with Barack Obama.”

The sixth Republican debate took place at a tense time for the Republican field with the clock ticking toward Feb. 1 in Iowa.

Cruz has taken the lead in some polls of Iowa Republican voters. A victory there could propel him higher in the national race.

A Reuters/Ipsos rolling national poll on Jan. 12 showed Trump had 39 percent of the vote, Cruz 14.5 percent, Bush 10.6 percent, Carson 9.6 percent, while 6.7 percent favored Rubio, once viewed by the Republican establishment and many donors as a rising star.