Ted Cruz Clarifies Transgender Bathroom Stance: ‘Grown Man Pretending To Be A Woman’ Shouldn’t Be Allowed

Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas posted an ad on Twitter Friday morning that targeted competitor Donald Trump's stance that transgender people should be allowed to use the bathroom they feel is appropriate. Cruz called Trump's position politically correct nonsense.

"Should a grown man pretending to be a woman be allowed to use the women's restroom?" the video begins, spelling the sentence out slowly in block letters. "The same restroom used by your daughter? Your wife? "

The screen then reads "Donald Trump thinks so," as a clip of Trump saying "people go they use the bathroom that they feel is appropriate" plays in the background.

"It's not appropriate. It's not safe," Cruz's ad reads. "It's P.C. [political correctness] nonsense that's destroying America. Donald Trump won't take on the P.C. police. He's one of them."

The video continued a series of attacks against transgender rights leveled by the Cruz, who has positioned himself as the evangelical candidate in the GOP presidential race.

"Have we gone stark-raving nuts?" Cruz said at a Maryland rally Thursday. "Grown adult men — strangers — should not be alone in a bathroom with little girls," he later added.

The ad from Cruz comes as North Carolina has dealt with continual blowback for passing HB 2, a law that in part requires transgender people to use government building bathrooms aligned with their biological sex. Advocates call the controversial law, and others like it, anti-transgender and discriminatory. Major musical acts like Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr and Pearl Jam have canceled concerts in the state, while tech giants like Facebook, Apple and Google have demanded the law be repealed.

Transgender bathroom rights have been a talking point among some conservatives during the 2016 election, notably former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who said he wished he could have pretended to be transgender in high school “when it came time to take showers in [physical education].”