This is how terrible America looks to Donald Trump
Trump-Cruz rift roils Republicans on day meant to unite party and rally Americans
CLEVELAND | By Amy Tennery and Ginger Gibson
A defiant Ted Cruz said on Thursday he refused to be Donald Trump's "servile puppy dog," further exposing Republican rifts just as Trump seeks to unite the party and rally Americans behind his unconventional White House bid.
Cruz, the U.S. senator who came in second to Trump in the race for the Republican nomination after a bitter campaign, was booed by delegates at the Cleveland convention on Wednesday night when he refused to endorse Trump in a high-profile speech.
The conservative senator from Texas stood his ground on Thursday, the fourth and last day of a raucous convention. The party had made the theme for the day "Make America One Again."
As the last speaker at the gathering, Trump, 70, hopes to end on a positive note when he makes a prime-time address to formally accept the presidential nomination and launch the official start of his campaign against the presumptive Democratic nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Cruz, 45, refused to say whether he would vote for Trump, who on the campaign trail had insulted the senator's wife Heidi for her physical appearance and suggested that Cruz's father was linked to late President John F. Kennedy's assassin.
"I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father," Cruz told a meeting of the Texas delegation in Cleveland.
READ MORE: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-elec...
CLEVELAND | By Amy Tennery and Ginger Gibson
A defiant Ted Cruz said on Thursday he refused to be Donald Trump's "servile puppy dog," further exposing Republican rifts just as Trump seeks to unite the party and rally Americans behind his unconventional White House bid.
Cruz, the U.S. senator who came in second to Trump in the race for the Republican nomination after a bitter campaign, was booed by delegates at the Cleveland convention on Wednesday night when he refused to endorse Trump in a high-profile speech.
The conservative senator from Texas stood his ground on Thursday, the fourth and last day of a raucous convention. The party had made the theme for the day "Make America One Again."
As the last speaker at the gathering, Trump, 70, hopes to end on a positive note when he makes a prime-time address to formally accept the presidential nomination and launch the official start of his campaign against the presumptive Democratic nominee, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Cruz, 45, refused to say whether he would vote for Trump, who on the campaign trail had insulted the senator's wife Heidi for her physical appearance and suggested that Cruz's father was linked to late President John F. Kennedy's assassin.
"I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father," Cruz told a meeting of the Texas delegation in Cleveland.
READ MORE: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-elec...
Lest the TV sound favor the podium, here is an account of what it was like in the back of the house, from lefty site Vox. Libby Nelson writes:
As Cruz told the attendees at the Republican National Convention to vote up and down the ticket, the chants started to ring out: "Go home!" When it became clear that this was as close as he was going to get to an endorsement, the restive audience turned to angry: "We want Trump!"
On the stage, Cruz was circling back to a meant-to-be-touching anecdote about the child of a fallen police officer, but from the back of the arena — where the view of his face on the Jumbotron was unobstructed — it was impossible to hear anything but the boos of the angry crowd, louder than it had been for most of the convention. I couldn’t tell you how his speech ended. Almost everything after Cruz said "vote your conscience" was subsumed in an angry roar.