When asked in an interview on MSNBC about Cruz’s poorly received speech at the convention, Michael Cohen, special counsel to Trump and executive vice president of the Trump Organization, said Cruz should be punished by the party.
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“As a Cruz supporter I would have wanted him to just [have] not gone on”, he said. The delegates from Washington state were firmly behind Cruz when they initially arrived in Cleveland, Ohio at the start of this week.
During the long and contentious primary race Trump mocked Cruz’s wife over her looks, repeatedly referred to him as “Lying Ted”, questioned his citizenship and linked the senator’s father to the John F. Kennedy assassination.
In an extraordinary display of party division – at a typically staid Texas state delegation breakfast that is meant to exemplify convention-week harmony – Cruz strained to manage the vitriol directed his way, stressing that he had not said a cross word about Trump. “And that pledge was not a blanket commitment that if you go and slander and attack Heidi, that I’m going to nonetheless come like a servile puppy dog and say, ‘Thank you very much for maligning my wife and maligning my father'”.
I was sitting near a chemical engineer from Tennessee who said he’d been a Cruz supporter.
Cruz’s broken pledge to support the will of the people tonight was one of those career-ending “read my lips” moments. I think he made a mistake. “In that speech last night I did not say a single negative word against Donald Trump“.
While Cruz remained steadfast in his decision not to endorse Trump, he emphasized that he did not attack the nominee either.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign seized on Cruz’s speech as well, tweeting: “Vote your conscience” with a link to her website.
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By the end of his speech, he was met with boos from the crowd; Trump had also got wind of Cruz’s speech as he appeared in the Quickens Loans Arena as Cruz was wrapping up his speech. Marco Rubio – two other rivals who spoke Wednesday night – derailed what many Republicans hoped would be a show of unity behind the party’s divisive standard-bearer. “In this election there is only one candidate who will support the Constitution”. “I don’t know how you manage to get a two-minute standing ovation and then get booed off the stage”.
