Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign manager Jeff Roe thinks Donald Trump would have won the Democratic primary for president, if he had chosen to go that route.
Roe told a crowd at the Dole Institute of Politics earlier this month that Trump’s beliefs on abortion and gay marriage, such as they are known, do not differ greatly from the Democrats.
“I think he’d win the Democrat primary, if he would have ran as a Democrat,” Roe said. “I don’t think it’s a pox on the Republican House like a lot of people do. If he would have, I mean, Bernie Sanders took Hillary [Clinton] to the mat.”
“If Donald Trump ran as a Democrat, he would have won their nomination,” he added. “Thankfully he didn’t run as a third party because then we might have third parties for now, forever afterwards.”
Roe said if Trump had run as a pro-union and pro-choice Democrat, he would have defeated Clinton handily, saying, “He cleans her clock.”
Trump has often railed against both parties throughout his campaign and has routinely criticized the nation’s top-ranking Republican, House Speaker Paul Ryan, on Twitter in recent days. Trump supporters have said they are frustrated with Republicans dumping Trump by protesting at Republican National Committee headquarters on Monday.
