What Happened When Ted Cruz Told a 3 Year Old Girl the 'World's On Fire'

— -- Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, came face to face with one of his littlest questioners yet in New Hampshire when he had to explain to a three year old girl that the "world's on fire."

“The Obama economy is a disaster. Obamacare is a train wreck, and the Obama Clinton foreign policy of leading from behind. The whole world’s on fire,” Cruz said at an event in Barrington, New Hampshire on Sunday.

That’s when a little girl, who the Concord Monitor identified as three-year-old Julie Trant, interrupted the senator’s speech with a voice full of astonishment.

“The world’s on fire?” Trant said.

Her interjection drew laughter from the crowd, and Cruz repeated his claim -- but offered assurances to the young girl that her mother and others are working to make the world safe.

“The world’s on fire. Yes. Your world’s on fire,” he said to more laughter. “But you know what your mommy’s here and everyone’s here to make sure that the world you grow up in is even better."

But apparently the thought of the world engulfed in flames didn't bother the little girl. In a radio interview with WRKO Monday, Trant’s mother, Michelle, described her daughter’s reaction, saying she wasn’t scared by Cruz’s claim and instead views the senator as a “firefighter."

“She looked out from my phone that she was playing with and she goes ‘the world’s on fire’ in a really high question kind of voice,” Michelle said. “A huge Cruz supporter both my husband and myself, I said to her, 'He will be the one that will put that fire out,' so she looked at him and he was a hero.”

“She really basically was like, ‘Oh oh, this is a great man,’” Michelle said. “He’s a firefighter in her mind as a three year old and was quite happy and then she wanted a cookie."

Zane Richer, the YouTube user who posted the exchange, said the little girl wasn't frightened by Cruz's statement.

"I was there, right behind this little girl, and she wasn't frightened in the least," Zane Richer wrote on the video page. "As a matter of fact, she was smiling and looking around, and after, when the Senator went on with his speech, the little girl just went back to calmly playing games on a phone. She wasn't upset at all."