Ted Cruz shrugs off past feud and lauds Trump in Time essay

Dylan Stableford
·Senior Writer

Ted Cruz wrote an essay for Time magazine’s “100 Most Influential People of 2018” issue praising President Trump as “a flash-bang grenade thrown into Washington by the forgotten men and women of America.”

According to the Texas senator, the chaotic nature of Trump’s first year in office is “not a bug but a feature.”

“The same cultural safe spaces that blinkered coastal elites to candidate Trump’s popularity have rendered them blind to President Trump’s achievements on behalf of ordinary Americans,” Cruz writes in the issue, which hits newsstands Friday. “While pundits obsessed over tweets, he worked with Congress to cut taxes for struggling families. While wealthy celebrities announced that they would flee the country, he fought to bring back jobs and industries to our shores. While talking heads predicted Armageddon, President Trump’s strong stand against North Korea put Kim Jong Un back on his heels.”

“President Trump is doing what he was elected to do: disrupt the status quo,” Cruz adds. “That scares the heck out of those who have controlled Washington for decades, but for millions of Americans, their confusion is great fun to watch.”

It wasn’t always “great fun” for Cruz. During the Republican primary, Trump frequently referred to his GOP opponent as “Lyin’ Ted,” insulted his wife and suggested that Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which led to this epic rant to reporters at a campaign stop in Indiana in May 2016:

This man is a pathological liar. He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. And in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everyone else of lying. He accuses everybody on that debate stage of lying. And it’s simply a mindless yell. Whatever he does, he accuses everyone else of doing. The man cannot tell the truth, but he combines it with being a narcissist. A narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen. Donald Trump is such a narcissist that Barack Obama looks at him and goes, “Dude, what’s your problem?” Everything in Donald’s world is about Donald. And he combines being a pathological liar — and I say pathological because I actually think Donald, if you hooked him up to a lie detector test, he could say one thing in the morning, one thing at noon and one thing in the evening, all contradictory, and he’d pass the lie detector test each time. Whatever lie he’s telling, at that minute he believes it.

The man is utterly amoral. Morality does not exist for him. It’s why he went after Heidi directly and smeared my wife, attacked her. Apparently she’s not pretty enough for Donald Trump. I may be biased, but I think if he’s making that allegation, he’s also legally blind.

Every one of us knew bullies in elementary school. Bullies don’t come from strength, bullies come from weakness. Bullies come from a deep, yawning cave of insecurity. There is a reason Donald builds giant buildings and puts his name on them everywhere he goes. And I will say there are millions of people in this country who are angry. They’re angry at Washington. They’re angry at politicians who have lied to them. I understand that anger. I share that anger. And Donald is cynically exploiting that anger. And he is lying to his supporters. Donald will betray his supporters on every issue.

If you care about immigration, Donald is laughing at you. And he’s telling the moneyed elites he doesn’t believe what he’s saying. He’s not going to build a wall. That’s what he told the New York Times. He will betray you on every issue across the board.

And his strategy of being a bully in particular is directed at women. Donald has a real problem with women. He is proud of being a serial philanderer. … He describes his own battles with venereal diseases as his own personal Vietnam

At the 2016 Republican National Convention, Cruz was booed when he gave a speech while declining to endorse Trump, his party’s nominee.

Cruz eventually caved, endorsing Trump two months before the election and visiting a phone bank at the Republican Party headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas, to encourage potential GOP voters to come out and vote.

But even then, Cruz did not mention Trump by name in his calls to voters.

“Hi, this is Ted Cruz calling,” he said while leaving a voicemail with one potential voter. “I’m encouraging you to come out and vote on Election Day. This election is critical for the direction of our country. And I urge you to come out and support freedom, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.”

The Texas senator may soon find himself working those same phones as he campaigns for reelection against Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke. According to a Quinnipiac poll released Wednesday, Cruz held just a three-point lead (47 percent to 44 percent) over O’Rourke among the Lone Star State’s likely midterm voters.

As for Trump, he never deleted his caustic tweets about Cruz and his wife.

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