Ted Cruz mocks GOP candidates for praising Trump after backing him despite insults to his wife and father

Ted Cruz mocked GOP candidates in the Ohio Senate Republican primary for jockeying for the support of former President Donald Trump.

Mr Cruz has backed Mr Trump despite previous the former president’s previous insults against Mr Cruz’s wife and father.

The Texas senator was campaigning for former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel in Kettering, Ohio on Friday, saying that “when I look to candidates, I don’t look to see what they say on the stump, because they all say the same darn thing”.

“Every candidate says ‘I love Donald Trump. No, no, no – I love Donald Trump more. No, no, no – I have Donald Trump tattooed on my rear end!’” he said mockingly.

During the 2016 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr Cruz called Mr Trump a “snivelling coward,” a “pathological liar” and “utterly amoral”. After losing that race, he made his fellow Republicans furious by refusing to endorse Mr Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention.

But following Mr Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, the relationship, which was once fraught both politically and personally, grew closer as Mr Cruz helped Mr Trump fight off impeachment.

Mr Cruz’s choice to push Mr Trump’s false claims of fraud after the 2020 election, prompted a former aide to tell Intelligencer that “most of Cruzworld is pretty disgusted” after the insurrection on 6 January last year.

“Everyone is upset with the direction things have gone, and the longer they’ve been with the senator, the more distaste they are expressing,” another former aide said at the time.

During the 2016 primary, Mr Trump retweeted a tweet comparing the appearances of Heidi Cruz and Melania Trump and accused Mr Cruz’s father of having played a role in the JFK assassination.

Mr Cruz voted to throw out electoral votes from states that voted for Joe Biden after a pro-Trump mob had ransacked the Capitol.

“Personally, it’s painful. It sucks,” a former Cruz staffer told Intelligencer last year. “We’ve always backed him because the country deserves principled conservative leadership … I’d say he got unlucky the Capitol was stormed by a mob, but in reality, he placed himself at the political mercy of others.”

Mr Cruz sought Mr Trump’s acceptance, offering to argue in front of the Supreme Court in connection to a lawsuit related to the false claims of election theft.

Former Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler told the outlet at the time that “he will abandon principle, he will abandon conservative values for expediency”.