It is unclear whether he had understood in advance what his failure to endorse Mr Trump in a prime-time speech would produce on the floor of the arena.
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The irony here is that, in the opening months of the Republican race, it was Cruz who did a great deal to legitimize Trump’s candidacy in the eyes of conservatives.
“He’s a chicken”, said Eugene Delgaudio, a delegate from Sterling, Virginia, who clucked like a chicken when asked about Cruz’s decision.
“I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father”, Cruz told a meeting of the Texas delegation in Cleveland.
The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro has an interesting alternative theory about Ted Cruz’s speech to the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night: the Donald Trump campaign “orchestrated the boos”. Most were critical, but some commended Cruz for not caving to the Trump campaign.
At one point in his remarks, Trump even suggested forming his own PAC to oppose Cruz if the senator runs again in four years.
Hawaii delegate and head of the delegation Nathan Paikai told NBC News he was saddened by Cruz’s remarks and said he thought the senator “committed political suicide”. Cruz did no such thing Wednesday.
Cruz’s speech seemed to amount to a political bet that Trump will lose the election, and opting not to throw his lot in with the nominee will preserve his fortunes in 2020. Susan Hutchison, chair of the Washington delegation, said she confronted Cruz after his speech and called him a “traitor to the party”.
Cruz didn’t tell the convention crowd that he plans to vote for Trump.
The Republican nominee will take the stage after an unusual convention that has been dominated by discussions of plagiarism and Sen.
“Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it”, Trump said.
The crowd’s boos quickly switched to cheers as Trump entered the arena at the moment Cruz finished.
He also denied that he was encouraging his supporters to write in his name on the ballot in November and thus withheld their support for Mr Trump. “What does it say when you stand up and say “vote your conscience” and rabid supporters of our nominee begin screaming what a terrible thing to say?” “If you love our country, and love our children as much as you do, stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom, and to be faithful to the constitution”.
Declaring America in crisis, Donald Trump pledged to cheering Republicans and still-skeptical voters Thursday night that as president he will restore the safety they fear they’re losing, strictly curb immigration and save the nation from Hillary Clinton’s record of “death, destruction, terrorism and weakness”.
The delegates responded with angry boos, and Cruz backer and former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli escorted Heidi Cruz off the convention floor as she was heckled by Trump delegates. “He needed to toughen up like every other Republican loser of any nomination battle in the last 100 years since Abraham Lincoln and just suck it up, be a man and back the nominee that he was beaten by, fair and square”.
He was going to save us from the undocumented immigrant criminals, the lazy politicians, the bad trade deals, the violence in our streets and the terrorism overseas.
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Trump, who has said he’d nominate Supreme Court justices who might overturn gay marriage, has nonetheless spoken effusively about his friendships with gay people while avoiding anti-gay rhetoric that many other GOP candidates have embraced.
