Sen. Ted Cruz continues to shore up the endorsements of some of the most far-right activists and elected officials in the country. Last week, he added to that list Republican Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin, who, in endorsing Cruz’s presidential campaign, took the opportunity to make a weird dig at immigrant single moms.
Telling talk radio host Charlie Sykes that “Ted Cruz is the one,” Grothman said that the Texas Republican “has the track record in the Senate, you know that he’s going to put a stop to this huge amount of illegal immigration in this country.”
Specifically, Grothman praised Cruz’s stance on birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, derogatorily termed “anchor babies” by opponents of the constitutional guarantee of citizenship at birth, bizarrely claiming that single moms “jump over here” to have their children.
“He stands up to the idea — he’s not for anchor babies,” Grothman said. “Some people don’t like that phrase, but the idea of saying, you know, a single mom can jump over here, have a baby and they’re an American citizen, is ridiculous.”
The comments come about two minutes into this audio clip:
It shouldn’t necessarily come as a surprise that Grothman linked “anchor babies” to single moms, since when he was in the Wisconsin state senate he sponsored a bill that would have required a state agency to promote materials labeling single parenthood “a contributing factor to child abuse and neglect.”
Grothman has also explained the pay gap by saying, “You could argue that money is more important for men” and claimed that efforts to help women in the workplace amount to a “war on men.” Last year, Grothman justified defunding Planned Parenthood by explaining that “ as a guy” he has plenty of non-Planned Parenthood healthcare options in Wisconsin.
