Heading into the home stretch before his home state's April 19 Republican primary, GOP front-runner Donald Trump on Sunday laid into rival Ted Cruz as a "guy who hates New York."
"He hates New Yorkers, and he's trying to put a different spin on it," Trump said of the Texas senator on "The Cats Roundtable" radio show on AM 970, before ripping Cruz for his 2013 vote against federal relief funding for Hurricane Sandy victims.
Jim Mone/AP
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is leading the polls before the April 19 Republican primary.
"He's a very anti-New York guy, and I guarantee if he ever made it to president, New York could forget about the federal government," Trump said.
"He voted against appropriations for New York … for Sandy, for other things, voted against them. Now he's trying to pretend like all of this stuff never happened," Trump added.
Cruz, in 2013 voted against a federal bill — that eventually passed — that was designed to provide much needed relief to Sandy victims.
Trump's Empire State strike on his rival for the nomination comes just a week after Cruz was crucified during a campaign stop in the Bronx, where residents and elected leaders blasted him for insulting the city and the borough.
In January, Cruz attracted statewide venom for his callous and condescending comments about "New York values."
Trump has been campaigning hard in New York, ahead of the state's GOP primary next week. A slew of polls shows the brash billionaire leading Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Cruz by a substantial margin.
During a rally Sunday in Rochester, Trump, who leads Cruz in the total delegate count 743 to 545, criticized a "corrupt'' election system for complicating his path to the Republican nomination. Despite his lead, Trump may fall short of the 1,237 delegates he must win to formally secure the Republican nomination.
Last week, Trump hired a new convention manager, Paul Manafort, to craft a more effective strategy to reach the magic number.
On Sunday, Manafort suggested his boss would begin running "a more traditional campaign," but also himself took shots at Cruz, whose team he accused of employing "Gestapo tactics" to rack up delegates at state and county GOP conventions across the U.S.
As his campaign continues to surge forward in New York, a Washington Post analysis found that Trump is not as charitable as he claims to be, with the report finding his so-called philanthropy boiled down to little more than free rounds of golf on his courses.