Hours after Ted Cruz held a press conference Wednesday to blast Republican rival Donald Trump, the Texas senator pledged to run a honest and “honorable” campaign.
In the Cruz campaign’s latest fundraising email to donors, the White House hopeful claims his rivals’ recent attacks are “staggering” and that there’s a flurry of “misleading information” about him being disseminated by the mainstream media. Cruz has been accused of engaging in shady tactics immediately leading up to, and during the Iowa caucuses, and his leading opponents — Donald Trump and Marco Rubio — have continued to brand him as a “liar.”
Despite coming under fire from every angle and facing legal threats from Trump, Cruz is assuring his supporters he’ll fight clean.
“I’m so committed to winning this campaign, I want to make you a personal commitment today,” he wrote Wednesday afternoon.
The Texas senator promised his supporters he would “always shoot straight” with them, saying, “I will tell the truth [and] I will apologize when I make a mistake.”
“I will run an honorable campaign,” he added. “I will discuss the difference between candidates, but I will not engage in personal negative attacks. And when I’m personally attacked, I will not respond in kind with vicious below-the-belt revenge attacks.”
The email, sent just after 2 p.m. on Wednesday, comes just two hours after Cruz called out Trump directly for his legal threats. On Tuesday, Trump’s attorney sent a cease-and-desist demand to Cruz, requesting that his campaign stop airing an ad that questions Trump’s opposition to abortion.
“You have been threatening frivolous lawsuits for your entire adult life,” Cruz said during the press conference. “Even in the annals of frivolous lawsuits, this takes the cake.”
The two GOP candidates are currently campaigning across South Carolina ahead of the state’s Republican primary this Saturday. They will next appear on the debate stage together in Houston, Texas on Feb. 25.
