Former Ted Cruz communications director slams ‘coward’ senator for supporting Trump — and hopes Republicans ‘get wiped out’ in November

During the 2016 GOP presidential primary, Donald Trump was  relentless in his attacks on Sen. Ted Cruz, insulting the far-right Texas senator’s wife, Heidi, and promoting the conspiracy theory that Cruz’s father was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963. But in 2020, Cruz is all in for Trump’s reelection — and Never Trump conservative Rick Tyler, who served as Cruz’ communications director in 2016, slammed the senator’s lack of integrity in an interview for Yahoo News’ “Skullduggery” podcast.

Tyler, author of the new book, “Still Right: An Immigrant-Loving, Hybrid-Driving, Composting American Makes the Case for Conservatism,” stressed that Cruz is “just a coward” for supporting Trump despite the negative feelings he has about him.

The Never Trumper told Yahoo News, “You have a choice in this world: you can be a political leader and talk about principle. Or you can do the popular thing — in Texas, supporting Trump is a popular thing — and try to hold all your supporters together because you want to maintain power. But you know what? Sometimes, you’ve just got to be willing to give up power. Sometimes, you’ve got to be willing to stand for the truth.”

In 2016 — when Cruz still had hopes of winning the Republican presidential nomination — he argued that Trump was too morally bankrupt to be president. But after Trump won the GOP nomination and the general election and was sworn in as president in January 2017, Cruz flip-flopped and declared himself to be a loyal ally. Trump supporters would argue that all of the insults that Trump and Cruz exchanged in 2016 were merely political theater, but according to Tyler, Cruz privately voiced his displeasure with Trump’s presidency in 2018 even though he wouldn’t do so publicly.

Tyler told Yahoo News, “It would be a very hard thing to do, for Cruz to point out all the times that Trump doesn’t tell the truth or his policies take us in the wrong direction. He would rapidly lose part of his base, which are Trump supporters.” And Tyler said of his 2018 conversations with Cruz, “Basically, we’re just going to have to get through this, was the sense that I got.”

During the interview, Tyler also lambasted Trump for his baseless claim that mail-in voting encourages voter fraud — noting that there is absolutely no evidence to support that claim.

“All these elections may get challenged simply because Donald Trump put out the idea that fraud exists in mail-in voting, even though their own campaign couldn’t demonstrate a single instance where it does exist,” Tyler told Yahoo News, arguing that Trump is trying to intimidate Democratic voters.

Policy differences and all, the right-wing Tyler is supporting former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. And he believes that despite Trump’s efforts to intimidate Democratic voters, November will bring a massive blue wave.

“I think the Republicans will get wiped out in this cycle, and if the Democrats can demonstrate that they can be a stable governing majority, I think they can be in a majority for a very long time, as they were for 40 years,” Tyler told Yahoo News. “I hope the Republicans do get wiped out, and I’m cheering for the Democrats. Not because I believe in their policies — I don’t. My philosophy right now is you need to kill the alligator that is closest to the boat. And the alligator that is closest to the boat is Donald J. Trump.”