Cruz Shreds Media for Wanting 'Coronation' of Trump as GOP Nominee So He Can Lose to Hillary

NewsBusters ^ | March 6, 2016 | Curtis Houck

[SoConPubbie]

Republican presidential candidate and Senator Ted Cruz (Tex.) sat for an interview with CBS’s John Dickerson Friday afternoon in National Harbor, Maryland that aired on Face the Nation and lambasted the media for “hav[ing] a coronation” of Donald Trump as the GOP nominee so he could be viciously defeated by Hillary Clinton in November. 

While discussing the possibility of a brokered Republican National Convention, Cruz pointed to how he’s remained close to Trump in the delegate count but at the same time, “the media wants to just have a coronation” of Trump “because the media knows Donald can't win the general, that Hillary would wallop him.”

Dickerson was unsuccessful in interjecting while Cruz continued to rip the media’s well documented attempts to push Trump on Republican primary voters despite what many foresee as a less than fruitful result for the party in November:

Donald may be the only person on the face of the planet that Hillary Clinton can beat and all of the attacks on Donald that the media is not talking about now, you better believe, come September, October, November, if he were the nominee, every day on the nightly news would be taking Donald apart and the stakes are too high for us to risk that.

The CBS News political director eventually forced his way in and offered the measly defense that the media collective didn’t believe that Trump would “get this far” and Cruz agreed that few saw Trump coming, but added that once Trump rose to the top, the liberal media have done all they could to hang on his every word:

The media has given Donald Trump hundreds of millions of dollars of free advertising. When you put Donald — when every press conference is carried live on every television station, and you essentially have a massive in-kind contribution from the media, that’s helped create this phenomenon[.]

Similarly to how Democrat Hillary Clinton surprised Dickerson when she admitted she was pleased a former staffer was granted immunity by the FBI to cooperate in her private e-mail server investigation, Cruz dropped this hammer on Dickerson by touting rumors he’s heard that reporters have numerous negative stories on Trump that they’ve held off on publishing:

CRUZ: I think an awful lot of reporters — I can't tell you how many media outlets I hear, you know, have this great expose on Donald, on different aspects of his business dealings, or his past, but they said, you know what, we're going to hold it to June or July. We're not going to run it now.

DICKERSON: You're saying reporters have told you that? They have told —

CRUZ: Absolutely. We have gotten multiple —

DICKERSON: — and from which organizations have they told you?

CRUZ: You know, look, I'm not going to out media outlets, but I can tell you there is so much there. When was the last time people are bringing up his tax returns, for example? We had a debate last night, didn't hear a word about his tax returns. 

Again defending the media’s handling of Trump, Dickerson complained that Cruz himself “could have brought” these matters to the surface and Cruz noted that he has plus other figures like Mitt Romney who’s suggested that there’s a “bombshell” in Trump’s tax returns. 

At the conclusion of the two-part interview, Cruz maintained:

You know, I promise you, come the general election, that will be the singular focus of the media and I think Republicans, we have been burned by that before. We're not interested in losing again, particularly when the stakes, I think, are catastrophic.

Editor’s Note: This writer attended the event in which this taped interview was conducted.

The relevant portion of the transcript from CBS’s Face the Nation on March 6 can be found below.

CBS’s Face the Nation
March 6, 2016
10:51 a.m. Eastern

JOHN DICKERSON: But any of these conversations in terms of jointly acting to deny him, not coming together behind Ted Cruz?

REPUBLICAN SENATOR TED CRUZ (Tex.): Look, my focus is very simple. It is on winning 1,237 delegates to be the Republican nominee. We are on a path to do so. Coming out of Super Tuesday, fewer than a hundred delegates separate Donald Trump and me and so as much as the media wants to just have a coronation and, listen, frankly, one of the reasons the media wants Donald to be the nominee is because the media knows Donald can't win the general, that Hillary would wallop him.

DICKERSON: But the media —

CRUZ: Donald may be the only person on the face of the planet that Hillary Clinton can beat and all of the attacks on Donald that the media is not talking about now, you better believe, come September, October, November, if he were the nominee, every day on the nightly news would be taking Donald apart and the stakes are too high for us to risk that.

DICKERSON: The media also thought that he wasn't going to get this far, so, that's hardly —

CRUZ: That's true at first, but let's be clear. The media has given Donald Trump hundreds of millions of dollars of free advertising. When you put Donald — when every press conference is carried live on every television station, and you essentially have a massive in-kind contribution from the media, that’s helped create this phenomenon and then I think an awful lot of reporters — I can't tell you how many media outlets I hear, you know, have this great expose on Donald, on different aspects of his business dealings, or his past, but they said, you know what, we're going to hold it to June or July. We're not going to run it now.

DICKERSON: You're saying reporters have told you that? They have told —

CRUZ: Absolutely. We have gotten multiple —

DICKERSON: — and from which organizations have they told you?

CRUZ: You know, look, I'm not going to out media outlets, but I can tell you there is so much there. When was the last time people are bringing up his tax returns, for example? We had a debate last night, didn't hear a word about his tax returns. Every other serious candidate —

DICKERSON: Well, you could have brought it up.

CRUZ: I could have and I do often, but as Mitt Romney rightly observed, the fact that Donald won't hand over his tax returns suggests there's a bombshell in there. The fact that journalists are not raising the question of what Donald Trump told The New York Times editorial board, the reports are —

DICKERSON: But the journalists brought it up, which gave you the platform to talk about it. So, surely they are. BuzzFeed wrote about it, so they are talking about it.

CRUZ: You know, I promise you, come the general election, that will be the singular focus of the media and I think Republicans, we have been burned by that before. We're not interested in losing again, particularly when the stakes, I think, are catastrophic.

[DoughtyOne]

Well, I’ll avoid that. Folks already think I hate him.

Frankly I don’t care for him much, but I’ll leave it at that.

That was an interesting observation > IMO.

[Jane Long]

Was it the DC article? Lots of dots connected, in that article, if so.

[DoughtyOne]

You guys are cracking me up this evening.

Ged ouda here... “:^)

[Publius22]

80 delegates separate Cruz and trump....

Correct, and we're done with a dozen red states. Now it's on to primaries in big blue states. Cruz's failures in the southeast are going to be difficult to overcome.

[Smokin' Joe]

Your statement was :"How sad that a solid Constitutional Conservative might lose to a loud mouth oaf. "

Then your post was butchered and the poster claimed to have "fixed it".

I said I didn't think your original post was broken (I.E. it did not need to be fixed), which was agreeing with your original post.

Then you come back at me saying I am wrong?

Have a good night, get some sleep, take another look in the morning. Later.

[Jane Long]

Maybe CRuz sees McRomney is his only path to VP, now.

[DoughtyOne]

Ted is left little choice. He has to do something and he’s not sure what it is.

This isn’t it > IMO.

[Windflier]

Aw, give Ted a break. He hasn’t been an American long enough to get how our elections really work.

[entropy12]

Just wait until after March 15th results are out.
As Ted Cruz falls more behind, it will get more bizarre and more surreal.

[SeaHawkFan]

So Ted has officially become a Romney/GOPe surrogate. Nice...

Really? Wasn't it Trump who said Cruz wouldn't be a good President because he doesn't get along with anyone in D.C.; but Trump would be great because he can make deals with Congress?

So which is it? You can't have it both ways. To do so is intellectually dishonest.

[libbylu]

Actually poor USA if DT is elected. He still doesn’t get the Geneva Convention, you have 100X more knowledge than him on basic civics and world affairs. He makes Bambi look thick skinned. He is a major crony capitalist - he is just going to be on the other side.

[DoughtyOne]

You’ve got your normal political animals, and you have your predator political animals.

Trump is a raptor. Ted is a hedge hog.

Guys like Ted, Rubio, Kasich... they aren’t in the same class with Trump.

None of these guys could fill the arenas Trump is filling.

He’s a political monster.

It sounds as if he has been that way since his high-school days. I read those comments of one of his classmates this morning.

Trump has been a natural leader his whole life.

You either have it or you don’t. If you don’t, you want to run against other guys who don’t. You don’t pick an election where a raptor is on the playing field.

Hillary is a raptor too. She’s never run up against a giant raptor before. This is going to be a learning year for her.

She’s going down.

[entropy12]

That had to be the funniest post of the day.
I really needed a loud laugh!

[RitaOK]

“Might” lose? I think it’s a promise he loses.

You still have a chance though, if Cruz being the smartest guy in the room, can throw in with the Establishment and silence the people’s voice and then manage to steal the nomination. Cruz is seriously desperate and would do it in a minute. Have you listened to him lately? No cool left in the man, not now.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

A bombshell in Trump’s tax returns? I really doubt it. He probably has the best tax lawyers in the country!

[SubMareener]

You haven’t read Heidi Cruz’s plan? You need to get informed!

[nopardons]

As far as I can tell, the ONLY thing that Cruz does well is memorization, so whomever has his ear and is feeding him what to say, he just parrots.

he is not being served well, by his advisers, and copying Romney, which is what he is doing lately, just makes him look nasty as well as creepy.

[Lakeshark]

Like I said, it makes Cruz seem desperate.

A bad carnival barker.

[nopardons]

Oh believe it...judge them all by what YOU see and hear and NOT emotionally.

Cruz jumped the shark and is becoming Romneyesque.

[Windflier]

Thank you, thank you. I’m here all week ;-)