Ted Cruz’s relationship with Donald Trump, is, um, complicated.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump suggested without evidence that Cruz’s father had something to do with the assassination of John F. Kennedy and that Cruz’s wife, Heidi, was unattractive.
The Texas senator, in turn, called Trump a “sniveling coward” and “utterly amoral,” and notably refused to endorse Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention.
Then, suddenly, things changed. Cruz went from Trump’s most prominent Republican agitator to one of his staunchest defenders. Trump even asked Cruz to argue a lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 election results in several battleground states if it reached the Supreme Court.
On Monday, Cruz explained what, uh, happened between then and now.
During an appearance on ABC’s “The View,” co-host Ana Navarro brought up what Trump had said about Cruz’s father and wife, asking him bluntly of his past criticism of the former President: “Were you lying then or are you lying now?”
Cruz laughed awkwardly before offering his answer.
“In 2016, we had a primary where Donald Trump and I beat the living crap out of each other,” Cruz said, claiming that his wife laughed at Trump’s attacks. (So I guess that makes it OK?) “We went after each other, and at the end of the day, he won. And I had a decision to make. … I could have decided, my feelings are hurt, I’m going to take the ball and go home and not do my job.”
Instead, Cruz argued that the only course of action available to him was to find a way to work with Trump – for the good of all of the people of Texas he represented. “I had a job to do and I had a responsibility,” he explained.
That explanation leaves a lot to be desired – in a few places.
1) Just because it’s your job, it doesn’t make it right.
2) The idea that Cruz did all of this because he knew he had to put personal enmity aside so that he could represent his state best leaves out a massive calculation that drove all of this: Cruz wants to run for president again and knew he would have no chance if he was seen as a Trump antagonist.
That’s not to say Cruz didn’t also believe that finding ways to work with Trump was a good thing for his constituents. He may well have. But, the driving force behind Cruz’s decision to scrape his way back into Trump’s good graces was his own political ambition.
To his credit, Cruz has made no secret of his desire to run for president again – maybe as soon as 2024. And the hurdle that Trump’s potential candidacy would present. “I don’t know what Trump’s going to decide – nobody does,” Cruz said earlier this fall. “Anybody who tells you they do is making things up. The whole world will change depending on what Donald Trump decides. That’s true for every candidate. That’s true of every potential candidate.”
That frankness stands in direct contrast to Cruz’s just-doing-my-job explanation of how he decided that he decided to make peace with Donald Trump.