CNN host Candy Crowley on Sunday challenged Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) while asking him how Republican decisions may have negatively impacted the United States’ ability to address Ebola.
Crowley asked how the sequester hurt funding for the Centers for Disease Control and how the National Rifle Association’s opposition to President Obama’s nominee for surgeon general, Dr. Vivek Murthy, also hurt the American response.
“We haven’t had a Surgeon General — who is the nation’s leading public health official, at least the voice of it — for a year. Some Democrats and some Republicans had opposed the particular surgeon general the president had nominated. Do you think it would have helped A. If NIH and CDC had had a little more money and B. Had there been a surgeon general to kind of calm what has been the fear of Ebola?” Crowley asked on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“Of course we should have a surgeon general in place,” Cruz responded. “And we don’t have one because President Obama, instead of nominating a health professional, he nominated someone who is an anti-gun activist.”
“And a doctor,” Crowley jumped in.
Cruz conceded that Murthy is a doctor, but he then called him a “crusader against second amendment rights.”
“And the funding, Senator?” Crowley asked.
The senator insisted that CDC funding has increased, but said that the CDC should use whatever resources it needs.
He then bashed Obama’s decision to nominate Ron Klain to lead the U.S. efforts to combat Ebola.
“We don’t need another political operative, which is what Mr. Klain has been,” Cruz said.
Watch the video via CNN:
