Sen. Ted Cruz said he and his family forgive Donald Trump during an interview with Houston’s ABC owned-and-operated KTRK-TV’s Tom Abrahams about Cruz’ endorsement of Trump:
You know it’s been a decision as I said I’ve been thinking about and praying about for weeks and months, discussing it with my family, and I made the decision today and announced it Friday.
I’ve discussed it with both Heidi and my dad. I love my wife. I love my dad. Both of them have forgiven Donald. I have forgiven him. This is not personal. This is not about our family. It’s about the country.
Asked if there were any deals between him and Trump, Cruz replied “There were no deals. We had been engaged in conversations.”
As Abrahams points out in this video of the interview, Cruz took a lot of heat when he did not endorse nominee Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention. Even supporters were angry that he didn’t endorse Trump despite promising to do back whoever the eventual nominee was. And now he’s backing a man he’s called “pathological liar,” “a narcissist” and a “sniveling coward.”
When he was asked if he expected a backlash in response to his endorsement, Cruz said, “Listen, [in] politics, there’s always criticism. If no one is throwing rocks at you, you’re not doing much of anything”:
We have two choices. We have Hillary or Donald. Now when this race started I had another choice in mind. I campaigned very hard. Tried to make that case. Out of 17 republican candidates, we beat 15 of them, but we didn’t beat 16 of them and at this point Donald is the republican nominee. At this point it is a choice, a binary choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and my conscience leads me to conclude that a Hillary Clinton presidency would do enormous damage to the [Supreme] Court, to the Bill of Rights, to the Constitution, to our freedom, to our jobs. And that’s why I am going to be voting for the republican nominee.
According to Abrahams, Cruz said he has offered his help to the Trump campaign, but there are no formal plans for any campaigning yet.
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