an effort to push Mr. Trump out of the headlines, but it's not the kind of leadership that is needed for America right now." Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney also criticized Cruz's remarks, writing that although he, too, opposed the Iran agreement, Cruz's statement connecting Obama to terrorism was "way over the line" and "hurts the cause". After the death of Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, Cruz said that the winner of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, rather than Obama, should appoint a new Justice. In June 2016, Cruz blamed the Obama administration for the Orlando nightclub shooting, reasoning that it did not track the perpetrator Omar Mateen properly while he was on the terrorist watch-list. Following the terrorist attack on Nice, France, Cruz said in a statement that the country was at risk as a result of the Obama administration having a "willful blindness" to radical Islamists. With the death of Fidel Castro in November, Cruz charged Obama with celebrating and lionizing Castro in public statements he made addressing the death. On December 28, after Secretary of State John Kerry gave a speech defending the U.S.'s decision to allow a U.N. resolution to pass that condemned Israeli settlements "on land meant to be part of a future Palestinian state", Cruz denounced the speech as "disgraceful", and said that history would remember Obama and Kerry as "relentless enemies of Israel". Cruz also accused the Obama administration of having a "radical anti-Israel agenda". Relationship with Donald Trump Cruz was one of Donald Trump's most vocal critics during the 2016 presidential campaign, with the two often exchanging heated comments directed at each other, and Cruz's family. But he became an important ally of Trump's in the Senate. Cruz said to journalists of Donald Trump: "I wake up every day and laugh at the latest thing Donald has tweeted, because he’s losing it. We need a commander in chief, not a Twitterer in chief. We need someone with judgment and the temperament to keep this country safe." In late January 2017, Cruz praised Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch as "brilliant and immensely talented" in a written statement. On February 23, while speaking at the 2017 CPAC, Cruz showed interest in Trump's nomination of a young justice in the mold of Scalia and Clarence Thomas. On March 1, he called Trump's joint address to Congress the previous day "positive" and "unifying". Cruz said that