BILL O'REILLY (HOST): The disadvantage for Mr. Cruz is the New York values debate. You will remember that in January, the senator said this.
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O'REILLY: Now, the truth is, Cruz is right, New York City values are very left wing. But the rest of the state lines up fairly conservative, although not at the level of Senator Cruz. However, as in any state, New Yorkers are sensitive folks, look at me. So the senator has to overcome his initial New York values comments, valid or not. Now I, your humble correspondent, am a born and raised New Yorker, but I have lived all over the country, Dallas, Denver, Portland, Oregon, Boston and Miami. I can tell you New York is a different kind of a place, especially because there are nearly 20 million people in the Big Apple metropolitan area.
With that many folks, you have to be more aggressive even to get a hot dog. And some around the country consider that aggressiveness to be rude. On the political front, the Democratic Party firmly in control of New York state, very similar to California. Even though Donald Trump is likely to win the Republican primary here, he will have a very tough time in New York state up against Hillary Clinton in the general election, if he gets there. As Talking Points reported last night, New York is a machine state, and the Democrat machine dominates.
As for Ted Cruz, he is a conservative Texan who now has to convince jaded New Yorkers that he is not denigrating them, that he was simply pointing out Donald Trump's past history of giving donations to people like Hillary Clinton and Governor Andrew Cuomo. But as we pointed out, Mr. Trump did that as a real estate guy and in this city, business people have to spread the money around if they want to get anything done. Talking Points believes that Donald Trump is now a conservative, although not nearly as right wing as Mr. Cruz is. Bottom line, if Ted Cruz wants to keep Donald Trump below 50 percent in New York, he has got a lot of hard work to do. And that's the memo.
