Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Kaine scolded Ted Cruz Friday for endorsing Donald Trump, and told reporters that if anyone treated him the way the GOP nominee treated the Texas senator, they’d never have his support.
“Donald Trump suggested that Ted Cruz’s father was involved in the JFK assassination. Now we know that is false, but false isn’t – there’s not the right word to describe it,” the Virginia senator told reporters at a campaign event in Austin, Texas.
“It is so outrageously false, and as far as I know Donald Trump has not retracted it. As far as I know Donald Trump has not apologized for it. And so if somebody said that about my dad, they would never have me as a supporter for anything,” Kaine said.
Cruz announced in a lengthy statement late Friday afternoon that he now supports Trump as the GOP nominee.
“After many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience, I have decided that on Election Day, I will vote for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump,” the Texas senator said in a note on social media. “Our country is in crisis. Hillary Clinton is manifestly unfit to be president, and her policies would harm millions of Americans. And Donald Trump is the only thing standing in her way.”
“A year ago, I pledged to endorse the Republican nominee, and I am honoring that commitment. And if you don’t want to see a Hillary Clinton presidency, I encourage you to vote for him,” Cruz wrote.
Cruz and Trump fought bitterly during the GOP primary, culminating in the senator declining to offer his endorsement for the GOP nominee during the Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
Instead, Cruz urged his audience to “vote your conscious.”
Trump leveled a number of brutal attacks at Cruz and his family during the primary, including suggestions that the senator’s father was involved in the assassination of a U.S. president, demeaning comments aimed at the senator’s wife and peddling rumors that the senator maintained a steady supply of mistresses.
Cruz responded to these charges with varying degrees of anger, including one time when he called the nominee a “snivelling coward.”
“It’s not easy to tick me off. I don’t get angry often, but you mess with my wife, you mess with my kids, that’ll do it every time,” Cruz told reporters in March.
“Real men don’t try to bully women,” he said, adding that Trump’s remarks on his family were the actions “of a small and petty man who is intimidated by strong women.”
“Real men don’t do that, and Donald is indicating the fear that keeps him up at night when he lashes out with anger,” Cruz said. “Donald should stick with attacking me, because Heidi is way out of Donald Trump’s league.”
