Posted on 09/09/2015 7:34:52 PM PDT by VinL
Donald Trump isn’t naïve about what Ted Cruz is up to.
Behind the Texas senator’s flattery, phone calls and his invitation to share a stage at the Capitol Wednesday, there’s a middle-of-the-pack rival with designs on Trump’s supporters. And the real estate mogul is well aware of it.
“I’m a very confident person,” Trump told POLITICO in an interview. “I’m not worried about giving someone else exposure, especially if that someone else is a person who deserves respect.”
In part, Trump’s comfort with sharing the spotlight with Cruz at a high-profile rally to oppose the Iran deal is a measure of the frontrunner’s supreme confidence in his ability to steal a scene. But it’s also a reflection of an unusual relationship that predates the presidential race – one that was initiated as much by Trump as by Cruz.
It’s been cultivated over the past two years through private meetings at conservative confabs and at sit-downs in Trump’s New York offices. Trump has contributed $5,000 to Cruz’s leadership PAC; the Texas senator, for his part, spoke at a GOP fundraiser held at a luxe Palm Beach club owned by the billionaire.
According to a Trump associate, the two even made plans for a sit-down lunch with their wives in early June, only to see the social call waylaid by a Senate vote on the National Security Agency (a Cruz adviser confirmed that they had planned on a meeting that was interrupted by votes, but didn’t recall the lunch detail).
The get-together was rescheduled for July, when the senator ventured to Trump Tower and asked Trump to come to Texas and visit the border, according to the Cruz adviser. But Senate votes were called again, and so on July 23, Trump ventured there on his own – accompanied by a media circus.
Now, though, as Trump and Cruz vie to win over conservative voters who are deeply frustrated with the Republican Congress, who are outraged by illegal immigration and angry with Washington more broadly, their mutual admiration society suddenly has broader political implications.
By going to great lengths to compliment Trump, appearing with him and refusing to draw contrasts with him – even as others in the field have attacked the billionaire for making controversial comments disparaging John McCain, immigrants and women – Cruz has opened himself to criticism that he’s making a cynical play for Trump’s voters in the event Trump falters.
Cruz’s campaign scoffs at that notion. The senator respects the real estate mogul and his ability to highlight issues that are important to the senator, aides note, such as opposing illegal immigration and the Iran deal, and the two are genuinely friends.
The foundations of the relationship date back to when they first met in the green room two years ago at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, a Christian conservative gathering hosted by prominent Iowa activist Bob Vander Plaats.
When an aide to Vander Plaats asked Cruz if he had met Trump yet, Cruz said he’d love to say hi – and accompanied by his father Rafael, Cruz met the billionaire before he and Trump delivered the final speeches of the event.
It was a breezy meeting -- they took photos and exchanged niceties, Vander Plaats recounted. But it was an introduction that laid the groundwork for the friendship to develop that fall, when Cruz played a key role in forcing a government shutdown over a procedural vote on Obamacare. The move made him reviled by Republican leadership and most of fellow GOP senators but he found support from grassroots activists — and from Trump.
“Senator, hang in there, wherever you are,” Trump said in comments directed to Cruz in November of that year, speaking at a dinner sponsored by the American Spectator, a conservative publication, that Cruz also attended. “Hang in there, senator, but it wasn’t easy for you, I can tell you, ‘cause I watched people sniping at your heels, and I’m not talking about the Democrats. So just keep it going.”
They met privately for 20 minutes at that event, according to the Trump associate, to talk about defunding the health care law, though Trump was more of the mindset that Obamacare should be allowed to play out — and fail — on its own, according to this source.
“This wasn’t a fundamental disagreement, it was to talk strategy about how to defund Obamacare,” the source said.
Back at the dinner, Jeffrey Lord, a contributing editor for the American Spectator, who flew to Washington with Trump on his plane for the dinner, introduced the businessman. He recalled that Cruz, who also spoke at the dinner, praised Trump in his speech as well, referring to him as a “TV star.”
“Cruz came later and the favor was returned,” Lord said. “He was very, very nice to Donald Trump.”
Trump told POLITICO that such overtures go a long way with him. He appreciates that Cruz refrains from “sniping” at him, the way other candidates do, he said — and the way other Republicans sniped at Cruz in 2013.
“He has been very supportive, he has not been a sniper like so many of the others have,” Trump said. “And he has been very supportive of the positions I’ve taken, agreed with the wall [on the border] on illegal immigration, he didn’t try to make points by sniping…I always liked him. There’s a very strong mutual respect.”
The relationship has not always been sunny. On the day that Cruz announced for president, Trump — to the chagrin of at least one associate who wanted to keep the Cruz campaign close – was still questioning whether the senator, who was born in Canada to an American-born mother, had sufficiently resolved citizenship issues in order to run for president (Cruz, who at one point had dual citizenship, has formally renounced his Canadian citizenship).
But both camps managed to maintain good ties and keep channels of communication open – after Cruz announced his bid for president, the campaign saw Trump as a potential supporter, and as someone with whom he wanted to discuss the contest.
Once Trump himself joined the race, that didn’t change. Cruz wants to win over Trump’s voters, said a Cruz adviser, just like he wants everyone else’s voters.
“This is a campaign for the nomination of president of the United States of America, for the Republican Party,” the adviser said. “The idea that somehow there’s something unseemly about trying to win over other people’s voters — that’s silly. Of course we’re trying to win over their voters, they’re trying to win over our voters, that’s the whole game, that’s the whole process. The idea that this is a sneaky way to win over Trump’s voters is a silly assertion. This is a campaign competing for the same voters.”
Since Trump tends to shed light on issues that are in Cruz’s wheelhouse — like illegal immigration — he attracts the attention of voters who might otherwise be tuning out but who could be receptive to Cruz’s message, the Cruz adviser said. All of those things add up to making the public relationship with Trump beneficial for the senator.
“While everybody else is trying to figure out how to criticize and diminish [Trump], what they didn’t understand is Trump is bringing a lot of voters who are not engaged into the process,” the adviser said. “What we want to do is engage those voters, not alienate them…To be clear, that’s our strategy with everybody, except that Trump has the most voters.”
Asked whether he thought Cruz was defending him because he doesn't want to alienate his voters, Trump didn’t dismiss the possibility, but instead noted that he is trouncing every Republican – Cruz and everyone else -- by wide margins at the moment.
“There could be truth to that, I don’t know, but I think I have a very good chance,” Trump said, before proceeding to rattle off his poll averages, paper crinkling over the phone. “I’m leading in every poll…let’s see here, wow, yeah, I’m leading in every single poll.”
Trump says he doesn’t question Cruz’s motivations.
“We could say the same thing on the opposite, you know, maybe that’s why I’m reaching out to him. But it’s not. I just respect him, we have a mutual respect, we get along well. We both have the highest of IQs,” he said.
Trump, who like Cruz also opposes the Iran deal, says he is “honored” to have been asked to join Wednesday’s protest rally —an ask that he knows came in part, he said, because he can draw a big audience.
“I believe strongly the deal with Iran is insanity, that it’s one of the dumbest deals I’ve ever seen anywhere, in any business, any profession or any government,” he said. “I want to be there because I think that’s great, he asked me to be there. And one of the things I add is, I will get a huge crowd of people to go there.”
Trump doesn’t mind sharing that spotlight with Cruz.
“Not at all,” he said, “Because I put the country first…I could say, ‘Oh, gee, I don’t want to do that,’ but I don’t mind sharing it because it’s a very important issue.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/the-trump-cruz-relationship-213346#ixzz3lIcHuDs5
Very good. Mutual respect is an all-too-rare attitude these days.
Yes, new stuff, thanks!
Bttt
Cruz is not Brutus—he’s more like Mark Anthony to Trumps Caesar.
he’s Doc Holliday to Trump’s Watt Earp
He’s Alexander Hamilton to Trump’s Washington.
He’s Tonto to Trump’s Lone Ranger.
He’s Kato to Trump’s Green Hornet.
Interesting.
Ping to myself to read tomorrow.
Very interesting. Two men who seem to like and respect each other campaigning for the same job. Seemingly with only a few nuanced differences between them.
One and two on my list and two could become one easily.
Thanks for the heads up :) Will be on the lookout for Trump on both morning shows.
ROFL ROFL
*PING* Mutual admiration- Cruz/Trump
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