The morning after Ted Cruz was booed during a speech in which he declined to endorse Donald Trump, the Texas senator is addressing his home-state delegation and has drawn significant media attention.
The Texas senator said endorsing Trump would have made him a “servile puppy dog.”
“I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father,” Cruz said Thursday morning. “Right and wrong matter. We have not abandoned who we are in this country.”
Cruz’s speech Wednesday night stunned the GOP convention and has sparked intense debate on whether the Texas senator should have endorsed Trump, and whether Trump should have let him speak.
During the primary season, Cruz, along with every GOP candidate, pledged to support the party’s eventual nominee. The pledge was aimed at ensuring that Trump didn’t run as a third-party candidate if he didn’t win the nomination. But now that Trump has won, Cruz and other former rivals are facing accusations of betraying that oath. Only Cruz, however, took his opposition to Trump to the convention stage.
Cruz said Thursday that the pledge went out the window the minute Trump began attacking his family. Trump criticized Cruz’s wife’s looks, accused his father of being involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and was tied to a tabloid story that accused Cruz of adultery, though it was never confirmed by a reputable source.
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