INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Running behind as Indiana voters go to the polls, Ted Cruz on Tuesday morning finally revealed — for the first time in the campaign, he said — his true opinion about Republican front-runner Donald Trump.
“I’m going to do something I haven’t done for the entire campaign, for those of you who have traveled with me all across the country — I’m going to tell you what I really think about Donald Trump,” Cruz said to reporters at a campaign stop in Evansville.
“This man is a pathological liar,” Cruz said. “He doesn’t know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth. And in a pattern that I think is straight out of a psychology textbook, his response is to accuse everybody else of lying.”
Cruz’s outburst — and there was much, much more below —- came months after Cruz was secretly recorded in December telling donors his strategy was to “smother [Trump] with love” and wrap him in “a bear hug.” When the story became public, Cruz tweeted: “The Establishment’s only hope: Trump & me in a cage match. Sorry to disappoint — @realDonaldTrump is terrific #DealWithIt.”
What a difference six months makes. On Tuesday, with his campaign perhaps headed toward an end and Trump continually branding Cruz “Lyin’ Ted,” Cruz revealed the depth of his anger toward Trump.
“He accuses everybody on that debate stage of lying,” Cruz said of the front-runner. “It’s simply a mindless yell. Whatever he does, he accuses everyone else of doing. The man cannot tell the truth, but he combines it with being a narcissist — a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country has ever seen.”
There was more. “Everything in Donald’s world is about Donald,” Cruz said. “And he combines being a pathological liar — and I say pathological because I actually think Donald, if you hooked him up to a lie detector test, he could say one thing in the morning, one thing at noon, and one thing in the evening, all contradictory and he would pass the lie detector each time. Whatever lie he is telling at that minute, he believes it. But the man is utterly amoral. Morality does not exist for him.”
“It’s why he went after Heidi directly and smeared my wife — attacked her,” Cruz said. “Apparently she’s not pretty enough for Donald Trump. I may be biased, but I think if he’s making that allegation, he’s also legally blind.”
“But Donald is a bully,” Cruz continued. “We just visited with fifth graders. Every one of us knew bullies in elementary school. Bullies don’t come from strength; bullies come from weakness. Bullies come from a deep yawning cavern of insecurity. There is a reason Donald builds giant buildings and puts his name on them everywhere he goes.”
Cruz’s outburst came too late to have much of an effect on Indiana voters, who were already going to the polls as he spoke. But his words are sure to set off a debate on why Cruz did not reveal his feelings earlier. Why wait until his back was against the wall?
Obviously Cruz did not love Trump or think he was terrific back in December. Cruz was acting strategically, in what he thought was his political self interest. Now, whatever happens in Indiana, the question for Cruz will be: Why didn’t you say what you felt all along?
