….
THRUSH: And the thing that he kept saying over and over again is “you really ought to talk to Ted about this.” This guy is as wonked out on this material as I am — even more so. But I want to talk to you first about a couple of just kind of general things. I’m just fascinated, by the way, by that flight that you had with President Obama.
CRUZ: Mm-hmm.
THRUSH: I don’t want you to tell any great tales out of school, but is there anything you can kind of tell me about the interaction? Obviously it was cordial.
CRUZ: It was cordial. It was pretty limited. The president came back briefly on the flight down and said hello, but, I mean, the exchange was no more than a minute or two and it was just pleasantries.
THRUSH: Oh really?
CRUZ: And the same on the flight back. So it was not — he was up in his office the vast majority of the flight, and he was perfectly friendly, but we didn’t have any substantive conversations. In fact, most of what we talked about was Kevin Durant going to the Golden State Warriors.
….
THRUSH: — having a set of — you know what is — so what’s ironic about this is you have the candidate for your party who is running as being a businessman but he’s really running kind of as a real estate mogul and a branding guy, and you — but you were really using business practices in your campaign in a way that he’s not in his.
CRUZ: We — many of the senior people on our campaign came from the business sector and had not been politicos.
THRUSH: Right.
CRUZ: And we demanded an efficiency, but part of demanding an efficiency was the people who joined us. So many campaigns are populated by mercenaries —
THRUSH: Right.
CRUZ: — where the candidate — you’re selling something. It’s a bar of soap. Plug in the bar of soap, Candidate X. And in our campaign, one of the things that was inspirational is people were sacrificially joining the campaign.
THRUSH: Wow.
CRUZ: A number of the people on the campaign were away from their kids, were taking huge pay cuts, and were at the office at midnight, not because I’m sitting there with a whip and a time clock —
THRUSH: Right.
CRUZ: — but because they were fighting to save the country. We paid people a fraction of what other campaigns paid, and they worked harder because they believed in the cause, not the candidate.
THRUSH: So here’s a question, though, heading into — and, look. I fully understand we are on the precipice of you going and giving a speech in Cleveland. You don’t want to step on your own message and you clearly don’t want to get involved in any sort of conflict. I think too much attention is paid to a lot of these personal back-and-forths between the candidates. But my question to you is, what you’ve just laid out to me, could your candidate, Donald Trump, as a Republican, really learn from this? And are you surprised that he is not looking at this more closely?
CRUZ: Well, you know, I don’t know that I’m in a position to give campaign advice to Donald Trump, given that he just whipped me in a primary.
THRUSH: [Laughs]
CRUZ: So I’m not going to sit here and suggest there are things he should do differently. At least in the primary, what he did worked. Now, I will say there were dynamics that were complicated. We raised $92 million. This election, I think there will be books written in this election about the role of the media in primaries — and actually in both parties.
THRUSH: How so?
CRUZ: I think Hillary’s nomination and I think Donald Trump’s nomination, I think the media played decisive roles in both of them.
THRUSH: Let’s talk a little bit more about the Trump one, because I think it’s been more discussed. How — what role do you think the media played in terms of — I mean, I’ve been fascinated by how CNN has changed, but you’ve been more focused on Fox.
CRUZ: Trump received $3 billion in free media. There is no precedent for that in the history of politics. Look. Any Republican, especially any conservative, expects the media to be hostile. That’s just the reality of being a Republican. You’ve got to be prepared to deal with that. What we’ve never seen is the media engage in a Republican primary all-out at a $3 billion level, to put a sharp point on it. Four weeks before we dropped out, we were winning this race. We had won five states in a row, by double-digit margins, over the course of three weeks.
THRUSH: Right.
CRUZ: Utah, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Colorado, Wyoming. Every one of those was a double-digit victory. Very, very different states.
THRUSH: Right.
CRUZ: Very diverse states. What happened, once Marco [Rubio] dropped out, 80 percent of Marco’s supporters came to us, and the party was unifying behind us. But the 30 days before Indiana — and Indiana, as you know, is where we suspended the campaign — we spent, oh, probably $10, $15 million communicating with voters. That’s a lot of money.
THRUSH: Yep.
CRUZ: In those 30 days, Trump received $500 million in free media.
….
CRUZ: — at a very real level — 326,000 volunteers. They poured their hearts, their time, their energy into this campaign because they believed in what we were doing, and that was from, in many, many instances, looking me in the eyes, taking the measure of who I was.
That’s — you know, the week before we dropped out I was in California, and two little kids, I think 4 and 6 years old, gave me envelopes filled with change. They had a lemonade stand the weekend before and they wanted to give all the money from their lemonade stand to the campaign. That happened on a daily basis.
And I will tell you, Heidi and I are filled with an incredible sense of gratitude for being part of this journey, and we were inspired every day by the sacrifices. One of the things that I’m saddest about is when we suspended in Indiana. We had activists there from all over the country. People would travel all over the country, had knocked on doors, had made phone calls.
You know, when I announced we were suspending there was a woman who let out a wail that was piercing. And to this day I’m mad at myself that I didn’t — I wasn’t able to stay and hug every person there. And the reason I didn’t is I couldn’t. I was going to break down, and, frankly, the reason I didn’t is because of you guys. There were a gazillion reporters there, and I was not going to break down in front of an army of television cameras.
THRUSH: And that was important to you, not to have that happen.
CRUZ: Heidi stayed out and hugged every person there —
….
THRUSH: I’m the worst liar with the last question. This really is the last question. What are those people — because clearly you had a huge number of volunteers and a huge number of people who are devoted to you. What are they telling you now? What are you hearing from people now who supported you?
CRUZ: There’s a lot of despair, a lot of fear for the country, and the message that I have tried to convey, after saying thank you, is this is a battle that is a much bigger battle than one election, one campaign or one candidate. This is about issues and values that I believe are the foundation of this country. When you’re the son of an immigrant who came here seeking freedom, it makes you appreciate. In the history of humanity, there’s never been a country like America. And what I keep trying to convey to the grass-roots activists is this is a long journey. Most wars are not won in a single battle.
THRUSH: And 2016 was a single battle.
CRUZ: And the only way to win the war is to move people’s hearts and minds. For example, 50 percent of young people right now think socialism is a good idea. We’re doing a horrible job, and by “we” I mean conservatives, Republicans, free marketers, anyone who believes in liberty is doing a horrible job if half of young people think socialism is a good idea. Socialism has been an abject failure across the face of the globe, millions have suffered under socialism, and yet we’re not doing an effective job communicating that.
One of the things that I intend to devote a lot of time to in the coming years is continuing to try to move people’s hearts and minds with humor, with stories, with anecdotes, with facts and information.
….
- Discussion
-
CRUZ: I think the country is in a difficult moment and, at the end of the day, I care a heck of a lot more about America than I do about any political party. If the Republican Party stands for individual liberty, if we defend the Bill of Rights, if we stand for keeping this country safe, then we deserve to win, and if we don't, we deserve to lose. It shouldn't be — it's not just a game of blue team/red team. It is actually about making a difference in people's lives.
.@TedCruz: "You know, I read Twitter all the time." https://t.co/pCXH6RNPe9
— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) July 18, 2016
Thrush is just fishing for stuff he can use to help Hillary.
Hoping Cruz will stumble in some way, and spill some tidbit he can throw.
F him.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.