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.

[RitaOK]

The story you’re speaking of was posted on FR earlier and maybe a duplicate came up within the limited time for a second posting.

[nopardons]

Oh he's CROOKED and he has damaged what was left of his reputation long ago, by his own deeds and words.

Cruz has LOUSY judgement of people and is now joined at the hip with Crazy Glenn Beck.

[RitaOK]

Oh. Just wait. Cruz is sounding bizarro. It will come if he has to make it up again.

[RitaOK]

It was posted earlier.

[nopardons]

ROTFLOL.....good one !

[gov_bean_ counter]

Trump got a lot of mileage out of innuendo, suggestion, and guilt by association. He has played the game as much as any of the other candidates.

[nopardons]

oh libby....bless your heart. LOLO

[Windflier]

I know. I’m bad.

[nopardons]

I concur and you put better than I ever have. BRAVO!

All of the Cruz supporters just don't understand Hillary at all. She fights by her rules ONLY. Only one candidate understands her and knows how to take her down and that's Trump!

[nopardons]

No, you’re MARVELOUS ! :-)

[entropy12]

Yes! After 10 years of continuous audits, Trump is still not arrested for tax evasion. His tax lawyers must be top notch.

[AllAmericanGirl44]

He has the ewww factor in spades. Sorry, it’s the truth. I do not know a single person who doesn’t think he’s just plain weird. Has he denounced crazy Beck yet??

[nopardons]

Neither did Trump!

[RitaOK]

There is no one listening to Ted now. They never really were.

He didn’t catch the drift soon enough, that people were in no mood to hear anyone drone on about the weeds of policy, showing off their best debate tone, like Hillary and Ted.
Neither one of them got it.

Voters are past that and into lobbing pitchforks.

We can no longer make heads nor tails of DC policy anymore and DC wants it that way, and we have effectively been silenced and stalled off from effecting any change.

People are just voting for Ted against someone else, but not in enough numbers to make a difference in outcome.

There has to be outright theft to plop Cruz into the nomination. He knows that by now, and clearly he seems to be all for it.

[gov_bean_ counter]

That was the insinuation and that was what millions of Americans heard.

[DoughtyOne]

Have you figured out why the GOPe is so terrified of him yet?

Is it his lack of knowledge of world affairs?

Is it his language, his coarseness, his brash insulting behavior?

Is it his ability to own the media?

Is it his ability to stand up to them?

Is it his lack of understanding of every sentence in the U. S. Constitution.

Is it because they think he’ll break the laws of our nation?

It’s none of this.

Trump just yesterday said he would abide by all the laws of our land, but would do everything in his power to put an end to the terrorist threat.

No. Here’s what it is.

The North American Union, is what the political and top level corporate class wants. They want the U. S., Canada, and Mexico to harmonize their governments on the surface to only facilitate business.

Just beneath that is the plan to set up organizations that will rule us, supersede our sovereignty, and subjugate us like the Europeans have been subjugated under the E. U.

Trump’s wall will prevent us from having open borders.

What most folks don’t pay attention to, is that fact our government has been allowing fully open borders already, with a pretense that it is illegal and they are against that.

NO THEY ARE NOT!

Europe has OPEN BORDERS. That is what they want here.

Donald Trump is going to wall off our southern border, and that ends the NAU, in one fell swoop.

That is what scares them to death.

The last time someone put the kibosh to their plans, it was Ronald Reagan. Even he didn’t quite get it, allowing massive trade deals to take place setting up bodies of governance to facilitate that at our expense.

The World Trade Organization, GATT, NAFTA, each eat away at our sovereignty.

This is what Trump will address, at least with the wall.

The WTC and NAFTA will continue, but a North American Union will never happen under Trump. He will never allow open borders. He knows what the means.

You may dislike Trump. There are things to dislike about him. This is one reason to support him, even if there weren’t others. And there are others.

Ted and his wife are not the anti-NAU people we need close to power.

Ted is much more of an insider than you suspect, and his wife is glued to the inside. Her work on the Council on Foreign Relations was directly tied to harmonizing our nations in preparation for the NAU.

You can dismiss this if you like, but it is true.

[entropy12]

Actually poorRich USA if DT is elected. ==============================
There...fixed it.

[HANG THE EXPENSE]

Hiring jebbers finance team set off the alarm bells for me and now this.HMMMM

[nopardons]

Nope...Ted and CRAZY Glenn are still very much joined at the hip.

[RitaOK]

LOL!!!