WINSTON, SOUTH CAROLINA — Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) doubled-down at a rally in South Carolina this week on comments he made pledging to end gluten-free meals in the military.
CNN reported earlier this week that Cruz had told another rally crowd in the Palmetto State that gluten-free meals for soldiers, sailors, and pilots are a distraction.
“That’s why the last thing any commander should need to worry about is the grades he is getting from some plush-bottomed Pentagon bureaucrat for political correctness or social experiments — or providing gluten-free MREs,” Cruz said, using the shorthand term for Meal, Ready-to-Eat. (source)
On Thursday morning, Cruz told those attending the rally that he would not only end “socialist concern for the dietary needs of our armed forces,” he’d also end another practice.
“It is high time our soldiers learn to eat their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crusts on,” Cruz said with fiery indignation in his voice, adding that “Obama has coddled these men and women for far too long, cutting their crusts off for them. I say that if we are to be the greatest military power in the world, that our soldiers must learn to eat the crusts on their sandwiches!”
Cruz pointed to a study done by the Institute of Bread and Things That Go Between Two Slices of It that showed indisputably that “the crusts are the best part because that’s where all the flavor and nutrients are.”
“I think someone needs to sit our soldiers down and explain that we simply cannot dedicate the man hours necessary to cut the crusts off their sandwiches,” Cruz said with the tone and conviction of a priest on Sunday. Cruz said when he is elected in November, he will spend the first six months of his presidency sitting down with “each and every member” of our Armed Forces and explain to them that “there are starving children in Africa who would do anything” for the crusts off their sandwiches.
Senator Cruz said that despite never serving a day in any branch of the armed forces, as a conservative he “feels military-ish enough” to know “exactly what the men and women who serve in our Armed forces need and don’t need.” He said that he would be a commander in chief modeled after the great military leader Ronald Reagan.
“There is no illegal arms for hostages deal I won’t consider,” Cruz said, “and no illegal war in South America I won’t secretly fund. It is time to bring this country back to what made it so great, blunt military force indiscriminately spread around the world like the most deadly money shot ever. And we can’t do that with our soldiers asking for the crusts to be cut off their sandwiches.”
Asked later if he’d allow enlisted men and women to cut the crusts of their own sandwiches, Cruz laughed and shook his head in the negative.
“You know who used to cut the crusts of his sandwiches,” Cruz asked, “Hitler. And I’m pretty sure in Communist Russia the crusts cut you off. So no, you either the whole, wholesome sandwich as God intended, or you get no sandwich in Ted Cruz’s America. Period.”
