Cruz Blames Obama, NYC Mayor For NYPD Slamming His Muslim Plan

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Monday blamed President Barack Obama and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for the New York Police Department blasting Cruz’s proposal for police to “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods.”

“[New York Police Commissioner Bill] Bratton has a difficult job, and I am grateful for all he does to keep the people of New York safe. I also understand that politically, he has no choice but to implement the de Blasio-Obama liberal agenda,” Cruz wrote in a 1,500-word screed in the New York Daily News. “But his explanation for dismantling the unit makes no sense; it ignores the nature of the threat that we face from radical Islam.”

In the wake of deadly terror attacks in Brussels, Cruz said police should be patrolling Muslim neighborhoods. He later clarified that his plan didn’t mean police would be “targeting Muslims.”

The NYPD quickly pushed back on Cruz’s proposal. A department spokesman called it “foolish,” while Bratton wrote in his own Daily News op-ed that Cruz knows “absolutely nothing” about counterterrorism in the Big Apple.

Cruz wrote that “liberal politicians” like Obama, de Blasio and Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton had a “predictable” response to the terror attacks in Brussels. He said it was “obviously a surrender to political correctness.”

“I repeat my call for de Blasio to repudiate the dangerous confines of political correctness and reinstate this important unit as the first step towards a more proactive, hard-headed counterterrorism strategy on the home front,” Cruz wrote. “The bottom line is that to defeat radical Islam, we need to focus our counterterrorism resources where terrorists are likely to be. That’s not profiling or spying. It’s common sense.”