MSNBC “Morning Joe” host and former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough says Ted Cruz’s bid for the GOP presidential nomination is over.
Scarborough said Tuesday that the Texas senator’s “outsider” campaign has all but come to a complete halt after the South Carolina primary last Saturday.
Recommended Stories
“Let’s be honest and blunt this morning, okay, because that’s why people tune in to our show,” Scarborough said. “Ted Cruz’s campaign is over. I’ll tell you when it ended … It ended in South Carolina when Donald Trump beat Ted Cruz among evangelicals after coming out in support of Planned Parenthood.”
“Ted Cruz’s campaign is over. Mark it down, he’s not going to win the nomination, he may win Texas,” Scarborough said. “It’s over. And what happened yesterday was an ugly terrible exclamation point to the end of Ted Cruz’s campaign. … The question is, you may not believe that, it’s over.”
The “exclamation point” was a reference to Cruz’s decision to fire his communications director, after he doctored a video to make it look like Sen. Marco Rubio was bad-mouthing the Bible.
Trump handily trounced the competition in the last two primary contests in New Hampshire and South Carolina, even while taking some positions believed to be out of sync with GOP voters, such as supporting government funding for Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions and health services for women. Trump has said, however, he is anti-abortion and, as president, he would not want government funds to be used to fund abortions.
Cruz, has only won the Iowa caucus and is lagging behind Trump in most upcoming primary states. Much of the focus on the race for the nomination has boiled down to a “race for second” between Cruz and Rubio, who has yet to win a state.
NBC “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd, joining Scarborough by satellite, said he agreed with the assessment that Cruz is done.
