During Saturday night’s Republican debate in New Hampshire, ABC’s liberal host and co-moderator Martha Raddatz attempted to hit Texas Sen. Ted Cruz with a “gotcha” question, but he was prepared for it and quickly shut her down.
The topic of the question posed to Cruz was what he would do about a nuclear-armed North Korea if he were president, as the rogue communist nation had test-fired a long range ballistic missile shortly before the debate began. Cruz began his answer by noting that North Korea only acquired their nuclear weapons after forging a deal with the Clinton administration in the 1990s, pointing out that some of the very same people involved in that deal were also involved in President Barack Obama’s recent nuclear deal with Iran.
He then proceeded to explain how the U.S. should work toward increasing and improving our missile defense program and deploy such anti-missile technologies with our allies in the region, such as South Korea and Japan. He also explained the dangers posed by a North Korean nuclear missile as well as their stated plan to detonate a nuclear-armed satellite over the U.S. to cause an EMP, or electro-magnetic pulse that could knock out most of our nation’s vulnerable electrical grid. Raddatz seemed to not accept his answer though, asking him if he would have ordered a pre-emptive strike on the North Korean missile before it was launched.