Mitt Romney said Ted Cruz was 'hurting' the GOP. Cruz scoffed back that Romney got 'clobbered' in 2012.

After GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz charged earlier this week that the Iran nuclear deal would make President Obama the leading sponsor of global terrorism, the GOP's 2012 nominee pushed back on Twitter:

The Texas senator was having none of it. On air with KFYO’s Chad Hasty, Cruz responded to the tweet with a couple words aimed especially at Romney — and his failed 2012 campaign. (The relevant section starts around the 12-minute mark.)

"Now it's interesting, in the past couple of weeks we've seen both Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, both of them talking about, 'Now take it easy, guys, you don't really need to oppose this Iranian nuclear deal quite so forcefully,'" Cruz told Hasty. "You know, it's interesting, two days ago, or three days ago, President Obama was in Africa. And he chose to attack me directly for saying that if this deal goes through, the Obama administration will become the leading global financier of radical Islamic terrorism. And he attacked me personally. But you know what he didn't do? He didn't disagree with the facts."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Cruz went on: "The unavoidable consequence of those facts is if this deal goes through, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry will be the leading global financiers of radical Islamic terrorism on the face of the Earth."

"One of the reasons Republicans keep getting clobbered, is we have leaders, like Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, who are afraid to say that," Cruz added.

Cruz pointed to Romney's failed 2012 campaign against Obama as proof. "We all remember that third debate where Barack Obama turned to Mitt and said, 'I said the Benghazi attack was terrorism and no one is more upset by Benghazi than I am,'" Cruz said. "And Mitt, I guess listening to his own advice, said, 'Gosh, I don't want to use any rhetoric so okay, never mind, I'll just kind of rearrange the pencil on the podium here.' We need to stand up and speak the truth with a smile. The truth has power."