T’ain’t funny, McGee:

Ted Cruz responds to father’s ‘ill-advised joke’

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz reacted to criticism of controversial remarks his father made at an April 2012 event, when the latter urged voters to send President Barack Obama “back to Chicago, back to Kenya.”

“It was an ill-advised joke,” the first-term Republican senator from Texas told CNN affiliate WFAA in Dallas-Fort Worth, “and sadly, those who are trying to play the politics of personal destruction are trying to smear him and use that to attack me. That’s a shame.”

Cruz suggested that criticism was motivated as much by politics as by genuine outrage. He seemed to downplay the contentious comments, and he defended his father’s character.