He just admitted it. “I didn’t like what Trump said about him”, said Adryana Boyne, a Cruz delegate from Texas who has been public about her own disagreements with Trump in the past.
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“I have a message for all of you: The crime and violence today that afflicts our nation will soon and I mean very soon come to an end”. His comments in The New York Times created a new, day-long controversy hours ahead of Trump’s acceptance speech as the Republican presidential nominee.
The showdown between two of the GOP’s most abrasive personalities was evidence that many party stalwarts have not reconciled themselves to the fact that the celebrity billionaire will be their standard-bearer in November.
Cruz didn’t tell the convention crowd that he plans to vote for Trump.
Pat Anderson came to Cleveland as a Marco Rubio delegate but is fine with Trump. It was a scene. Refusing to endorse Trump doesn’t make Cruz a “coward” or, in the words of alleged human Ann Coulter, “a little bitch”; it makes Cruz the last man in the state of OH who has any idea what the hell is going on.
And, he said he asked conservatives at home and Republicans to go out and vote for “candidates that you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution”.
Cruz is indeed a superb orator, and despite Gingrich’s attempt to smooth things over, it’s clear the controversy Cruz finds himself in is one he was angling for.
Donald Trump declared he would save America from “death, destruction, terrorism and weakness” in a marathon speech he hopes will propel him into the White House.
The uproar over the withheld endorsement overshadowed well-received speeches by Eric Trump, the nominee’s son, and Governor Mike Pence of IN, the party’s nominee for vice president.
He also praised the “unity” the convention created despite the floor fight over the convention’s roll call and the rift highlighted by Cruz’s speech.
Heidi Cruz had to be escorted to safety when it was over, CNN reported.
In a series of widely circulated photos, Ivanka, 34, points angrily at someone just outside the frame and looks as though she’s speaking sternly while Cruz, 45, delivered his speech. He’s acknowledging that he hasn’t forgiven Trump for the sins of the primary. Cruz is widely expected to run in 2020 should Trump lose to Hillary Clinton. “U-S-A! U-S-A!” and Trump went off-script by chanting along with them. Trump himself tweeted that Cruz had been “booed off the stage”. But he later said Cruz did not honour the pledge that Republican primary candidates had made to support the eventual nominee.
From there he moved directly into, “Like each of you I want to see the principles that our party believes in prevail in November”.
Cruz is clearly not very good at making friends, and he obviously didn’t make many Wednesday night. He didn’t stray from his prepared remarks. “Than all of the people who voted in the elections?” he said.
Cruz did not back down from his non-endorsement on Thursday, saying that “I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father”.
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Some will read the backlash as the party turning on Cruz – something that might not help him politically going forward.
