Republican Senator Ted Cruz mocked US President Donald Trump's tariff policy and slammed Vice President J.D. Vance in a call with donors, Axios reports, citing two meetings between them in early and mid-2025.
Cruz told them that after the tariffs were implemented in early April 2025, he and a group of other senators called Trump and urged him to resign. The US president, the senator added, replied: “Go to hell, Ted.“
According to Cruz, the conversation was long and lasted until midnight. The conversation “went badly“, with Trump shouted and cursed. The senator then told the president: “If by November 2026 people's retirement savings have decreased by 30% and supermarket prices have increased by 10-20%, we're going to have a bloodbath on Election Day.“
“You're going to lose the House, you're going to lose the Senate, and you're going to be impeached every week for the next two years,“ Cruz said in a conversation with Trump.
Despite the internal tensions, Cruz's team has officially claimed that the senator remains Trump's “strongest ally“ in the Senate, Axios reported.
In 2016, Cruz and Trump clashed during the primary, according to the Daily Beast. Trump called Cruz “Lying Ted“ and verbally attacked the family Cruz, 55, is now considering a new presidential run, seeking to become a more traditional successor to Trump's political legacy in the Republican Party. His path, however, is complicated by Vance, who is considered the clear favorite for the Republican nomination, the publication writes.