Ted Cruz's 'hell no' to Trump after joking of a new role
Senator Ted Cruz is happy with his day job. The Texas Republican was sitting in the Andrew Mellon Auditorium in Washington, DC, on Wednesday when President Donald Trump joked about giving Cruz a new role. The Harvard-educated attorney-turned-lawmaker was praised as 'a brilliant legal mind' by the president during his speech touting the administration's new 'Trump Account' initiative. 'He's a brilliant man,' Trump said. 'If I nominate him for the United States Supreme Court, I will get 100 percent of the vote. The Democrats will vote for him because they want to get him to hell out, and the Republicans will vote for him because they want to get him the hell out, too.' The auditorium burst out with laughs at the president's remarks, though it's unclear whether Cruz found it funny.
The vacancy problem
'No, just no,' the senator told the Ruthless Podcast shortly after the president's remarks, according to a video exclusively obtained by the Daily Mail. 'Hell no,' Cruz added. Even if Trump wanted to nominate Cruz for the Supreme Court, there would need to be a vacancy, as the justices maintain their roles for life, and there's no indication that any of them will be leaving their post any time soon. The show's hosts, Josh Holmes, Comfortably Smug (an alias one not-to-be-named host has long gone by) and John Ashbrook, regularly discuss Republican politics with lawmakers and other GOP icons on their program.
They were the first to get Cruz's reaction to the surprise Trump announcement. Whether it was a joke or not remains to be seen, but the quip highlights how the senator, and 2016 political rival of the president, is still comfortably within Trump's good graces. Earlier this week a report indicated that Cruz slammed Trump and Vice President JD Vance while speaking privately to donors.
From allies to adversaries
'Mr. President, if we get to November of [2026] and people's 401(k)s are down 30% and prices are up 10–20% at the supermarket, we're going to go into Election Day, face a bloodbath,' the senator told the donors, according to Axios. 'You're going to lose the House, you're going to lose the Senate, you're going to spend the next two years being impeached every single week.' Trump was not pleased with the senator's analysis. '[expletive] you, Ted,' Cruz recounted Trump saying. The dispatch came just weeks after reports that Cruz is readying himself for a presidential run in 2028.
