How Ted Cruz explains his large flip-flop on Donald Trump

CNN
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Ted Cruz’s relationship with Donald Trump, is difficult.

Throughout the 2016 presidential marketing campaign, Trump’s suggestion with out proof that Cruz’s father was concerned within the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Cruz’s spouse, Heidi, was unappealing.

The Texas senator, in flip, known as Trump a “coward” and “completely immoral,” and particularly refused to endorse Trump on the 2016 Republican Nationwide Conference.

Then, immediately, the whole lot modified. Cruz has gone from Trump’s most outstanding Republican agitator to considered one of his most staunch defenders. Trump even requested Cruz to argue a lawsuit looking for to overturn the 2020 election ends in a number of battleground states if it reaches the Supreme Court docket.

On Monday, Cruz defined what, uh, occurred between then and now.

In a single appeared on ABC’s “The View”, Co-host Ana Navarro laid out what Trump needed to say about Cruz’s father and spouse, asking him candidly about his previous criticisms of the previous President: “You have been mendacity again then: you have been mendacity. Or are you mendacity now?”

Cruz awkwardly laughed earlier than giving his reply.

“In 2016, we had our first assembly the place Donald Trump and I beat one another,” Cruz stated, claiming that his spouse laughed at Trump’s assaults. (So ​​I suppose that is okay?) “We went after one another, and on the finish of the day, he gained. And I had a choice to make. … I might have determined, my emotions are hurting, I’d take the ball and go dwelling and never do my job. ”

As an alternative, Cruz argued that the one motion obtainable to him was to hunt to work with Trump — for the good thing about all of the Texans he represents. “I’ve a job to do and I’ve tasks,” he explains.

That rationalization leaves quite a bit to be desired – in a couple of locations.

1) Simply because it is your job, it would not make it proper.

2) The concept that Cruz did all this as a result of he knew he needed to put private grudges apart so he might greatest symbolize his state eradicated a serious calculation motivated all of this: Cruz wished to run for president once more and knew he would not stand an opportunity if he was branded as Trump’s villain.

That is to not say Cruz would not consider that discovering a technique to work with Trump is an efficient factor for his constituents both. He would possibly as effectively have. Nevertheless, the driving drive behind Cruz’s choice to return to Trump’s good graces was his personal political ambitions.

To his credit score, Cruz has made no secret of his need to run for president once more – presumably as early as 2024. And the roadblocks to Trump’s candidacy will seem. “I do not know what Trump will resolve – no one does,” Cruz stated earlier this fall. “Anybody who tells you what they do is making up tales. The entire world will change relying on what Donald Trump decides. That’s true for all candidates. That goes for each potential candidate.”

That frankness is in direct distinction to Cruz’s solely working rationalization of how he determined that he determined to make peace with Donald Trump.