Vice presidential running mate Gov. Mike Pence, R-Ind., right, listens as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during an goodbye reception with friends and family following the Republican National Convention, Friday, July 22, 2016, in Cleveland.
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In a blunt takedown posted Thursday, the head of Conservative HQ news site writes Cruz’s decision “was not good for Ted Cruz, conservatives, Republicans, and America”.
Steve King said on Thursday that Ted Cruz should have said he was voting for Donald Trump in his speech on Wednesday night. Two nights later, Trump delegates booed and cat-called Cruz when the Texas senator pointedly refused to endorse the party nominee during a prime-time speech.
“Yes, yes, yes, yes”.
“Anybody that has any brain power at all is gonna get behind the Trump train”, said the member of the Texas delegation.
Instead, he told the delegates to “vote your conscience” in the November general election between Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“Isn’t that what we’re all supposed to be doing in every election, whether you’re Republican, Democrat, Libertarian or Independent?” asked Cruz delegate James Kammer of Monticello.
“He’s the most self-centered, narcissistic, pathological liar I’ve ever seen – and you can quote me on that”, he said. “Is this the Soviet Union, or Germany in the ’30s?”
Trump said people have praised him for his “incredible” primary run but told his backers that “nothing’s incredible unless I win”. They want to vote for the Republican ticket.
Steve Benen at MaddowBlog had a piece today on, if you can believe it, comments Trump made this morning in an event with supporters in OH revisiting Trump’s earlier claim that Ted Cruz’s father had something to do with the assassination of JFK. His pledge during the primary to support the eventual Republican nominee “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, ‘” Cruz said.
Countered Schaffer, “This is politics”. The party was likely praying for the senator to bury the hatchet and support the party’s nominee. The focus should be about “party unity and the risk that our nation faces if Hillary Clinton is elected as president”, he said.
“It had nothing to do with me, except I might have pointed it out”, Trump said, adding that the tabloid should have won Pulitzer Prizes for its other investigative stories.
So why would Trump allow Cruz to talk after knowing the contents of the speech? “He wasn’t going to go back on his word”.
“I don’t know his father”. “But Cruz should’ve stayed home and kept his mouth shut”. “By not endorsing, in my opinion, I think he hurt himself”.
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Trump said that even if Cruz offered an endorsement he would not take it. “I don’t want his endorsement”, Trump said. It is not known what Cruz and Patrick discussed, but if his remarks to the Texas delegation the next morning were any indication, he was less than thrilled with how Cruz’s address turned out.
