In an interview with World magazine released Tuesday, Senator Ted Cruz discussed the controversy over his speech at a gathering of Middle Eastern Christians a couple weeks ago, in which he criticized the views of some leaders present and called for Middle Eastern Christians to be more supportive of Israel.

He said the following about some of the critics of his remarks, the more prominent ones being the New York Times’ Ross Douthat, the Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway, and The American Conservative’s Rod Dreher:

A number of the critics, a number of the folks in the media have suggested, for example, that my saying what I did distracted from the plight of persecuted Christians.
What I find interesting is almost to a person, the people writing those columns have never or virtually never spoken of persecuted Christians in any other context. I have spoken literally hundreds of times all over the country. This is a passion. I’ve been on the Senate floor, and I intend to keep highlighting this persecution. I will say it does seem interesting that the only time at least some of these writers seem to care about persecuted Christians is when it furthers an anti-Israel narrative for them. That starts to suggest that maybe their motivation is not exactly what they’re saying.

Senator Cruz has now released the following statement apologizing for and clarifying his remarks:

It was a mistake to suggest that critics of my remarks at IDC had not spoken out previously concerning the persecution of Christians; many of them have done so, often quite eloquently. It was not my intent to impugn anyone’s integrity, and I apologize to any columnists who took offense. The systematic murder of Christians in the Middle East is a horrible atrocity, and all of us should be united against it. Likewise we should speak with one voice against the persecution of Jews, usually being carried out by the very same jihadist radicals.